


Vulnera Martyr

by martyr (johnnycake)



Series: Switchblades and Leather [39]
Category: The Outsiders (1983), The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Disordered Eating, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gay Dallas Winston, Gay Johnny Cade, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Child Abuse Mention, Past Rape Mention, Past Sexual Abuse Mention, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Religion, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Self Harm, Stigmata, angel dallas winston, angel!dallas winston, bi dallas winston, bisexual dallas winston, complex PTSD, jally, religious, self harm mention, stigmata johnny cade, stigmata!johnny cade, stigmatic, stigmatic johnny cade, stigmatic!johnny cade, trans johnny cade
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2019-11-04 05:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17892575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnnycake/pseuds/martyr
Summary: "And she asked him: What will it be like? The Kingdom?And he said: It is like a seed.A single grain of mustard seed which a woman took and sowed in her garden.And it grew and it grew.And the birds of the air made nests in its branches."A little over a year after the church fire, Johnny is given the blessings of the stigmata. It is painful and torturous and in so many ways hurts like hell, but it's the best thing that's ever happened to him. And the worst thing that's ever happened to Dallas.(au in this universe, but is meant to take place a year after Red Hands and White Sheets has ended; it's unnecessary to read Red Hands and White Sheets to understand this fic)





	1. The Nativity Scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “And it came to pass, when Jesus had made an end of commanding his twelve disciples, he departed thence to teach and preach in their cities.” Johnny was so startled by the station he’d stumbled onto that he paused.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've been fascinated with the concept of stigmata and martyrdom for years ever since i first heard of it when i was a freshman in high school. i very recently read this supernatural fanfiction one of my friends recommended to me called mashiach about sam winchester havin' stigmata and bein' a messiah that was literally the most amazin' fanfic i've ever read in my life (seriously if you're a supernatural fan, go read it: https://archiveofourown.org/series/41208 ; other link: http://jimmynovaks-archive.tumblr.com/post/57991327804/mashiach-masterpost), so i decided to write one about johnny cade havin' stigmata. 
> 
> this fic is very loosely inspired by that one, so i think it deservesta be mentioned here. if the author wants better credit with that option to say "inspired by", i will give them better credit. i do want to mention tho that the only aspects of that fic i am borrowin' are the stigmata concept, which has existed in catholocism for a long long time, as well as the idea that it is the best thing that has happened to johnny.

“ _And she asked him: ‘What will it be like? The kingdom?’_

_And he said: ‘It is like a seed._

_A single grain of mustard seed which a woman took and sowed in her garden._

_And it grew and it grew._

_And the birds of the air made nests in its branches.’”_

_\- Luke 13:19_

 

_Wednesday, August 18 th, 1965; 3:45 p.m._

_Tulsa, Oklahoma_

It was the middle of August and the hottest day of the year so far. There were still a few weeks of summer left and Tulsa always surprised everyone by spitting out a few more unbearably hot days in her dying summer’s breath, but right now its inhabitants weren’t thinking about that future. They were thinking about that day. Every window in every house along every street was open as wide as they would go, inviting in whatever feeble breeze might bring relief to the languishing occupants of the houses. But the air was as stagnant outside as it was in and the loud noise of the unseen cicadas, beating their translucent wings against their small green bodies seemed to be the only thing the open windows let in at all other than the unwelcome sunshine.

Johnny sat near the window, his arms folded and resting on the sill, his chin resting on his folded arms, beads of sweat forming on his upper lip and under his bangs and all down his back even though he was only wearing the lightest t-shirt he owned and a pair of boxer shorts with it. He stared out at the front yard of the house he shared with Dallas, watching the sun dapple the grass with shadows as it shone through the leaves in the trees. There was no one on the street and every car was parked in their respective driveways. Any other day, he would’ve been out of the house, hanging out with the gang, doing _some_ thing other than lazing around the house, waiting for the blessed cool of night to come after the sweltering hot of day.

A light breeze ruffled his black hair, lifting it slightly off the dark skin of his forehead for a moment before going as quickly as it had come and Johnny let out a huff, wishing it would come back and cool him off, even just a little, even just for a moment. But that was a pipe dream. When Tulsa burned, it burned bright and long and there was no relief, not until the burn was done.

His eyes instead shifted to his cane, propped up against the wall as he thought about going into the living room and reading for a bit instead of sitting slumped against the window, but the heat seemed to have sapped all the energy out of him and any sort of extreme weather made his back and hips hurt all the worse and his wheelchair and his walker weren’t nearby, so he stayed put.

It had been a little over a year since Bob had been killed, since the church fire, since the reconstructive surgeries that had put his broken body back together again and covered his badly burned skin in grafts that scarred in the shape of diamonds, since Dallas got a job at the same garage as Steve and Sodapop, since Johnny moved in with Dallas after he got the job, since he’d learned, painfully, to walk again surprising every doctor who’d been convinced he never would.

It had been a productive year and a lot of good things had come out of a lot of bad, something no one had ever really expected to happen to begin with.

But there were still the nightmares. The nightmares Johnny still had every night of fountains full of a blonde boy’s blood, of shaking fingers clutching knives both covered in carmine, of burning fingers and flaming churches and screaming children.

Nightmares of guilt and sadness and terror all wrapped up in the painful reality of the past.

Nightmares that never really left upon waking and lingered through every day no matter how much Johnny tried to forget them.

And he knew Dallas had nightmares of his own even if he didn’t talk about them. They were etched into the premature lines forming on his eighteen-year-old face.

The cicadas buzzed dully as the afternoon sun beat down on the earth and the heat rose in waves off the asphalt outside, making the world around them shimmer and waver like a bad picture on a cheap television screen and Johnny closed his eyes briefly, reaching for a cigarette from the pack and zippo lighter resting on the window sill, trying with ever increasing difficulty to swallow the guilt that had been threatening to suffocate him for the better part of a year.

He pulled out a cigarette and lit one, watching the flame spark to life in the zippo lighter than that was really Dally’s before holding it to the end of the cigarette and inhaling. He closed his eyes again as he did so. It had been several months since he’d been able to smoke again, his lungs considered healed after the burns and smoke damage they had suffered during the church fire, and he still relished it every time. It seemed ironic, even to him, that he would go immediately back to smoking when his lungs had already been damaged by smoke once – something Dallas brought up every time he saw him smoke – but he’d been smoking since the age of nine. It was the only thing he’d ever found that stopped his hands from shaking, even if only for a few minutes when the nicotine buzz first hit him. He wasn’t about to stop now.

Another feeble breeze blew in the window, lifting his hair again and he opened his eyes, watching it rustle the leaves in the tree outside his window too, watching it billow the curtains of the open window of the house across the street. The cicadas stopped buzzing for a moment. Then the breeze stopped and for a moment more, everything was perfectly still.

If Johnny tried, not even that hard, he could imagine himself as the last person on earth.

He turned away from the window to the radio set that sat on a small folding table pressed up against the wall next to the small, very cheap chaise lounge he sat on now. Dallas had gotten it and the radio for him at some church rummage sale when he realized Johnny enjoyed sitting by the window and watching the world pass by.

“Might be niceta have somethin’ta sit in other than your wheelchair and somethin’ta listen to other than your own thoughts,” he’d said when he brought them home, smiling sheepishly. They’d been together for over a year now and Dallas still had a hard time admitting when he was feeling something other than anger.

Johnny reached over and turned the radio on now. It crackled to life in a burst of static and incoherent noise before resorting itself into a weather report.

“...reaching just over one-hundred degrees,” the weather man was saying. “Definitely the hottest day we’ve had yet this year and it looks like there are plenty more hot days to come the rest of this week. Tomorrow –”

Johnny turned the dial on the radio, changing the station and cutting the weather man off. He didn’t need to listen to what he already knew.

The next channel was a music station, loudly playing the chorus of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by The Rolling Stones.

 

_I can’t get no, oh, no, no, no, hey, hey, hey_

_That’s what I say_

_I can’t get no satisfaction, I can’t get no satis –_

 

Johnny cut Mick Jagger off mid-sentence too. He’d never really been a fan of The Rolling Stones, though he knew Darry liked them. They weren’t bad. Just not his favorite. He was a much bigger fan of The Beatles and Elvis. If he really wanted to, he could get up and put one of their records on the turntable Dallas had set up in the living room, but he still really have the energy.

He turned the dial again.

“And it came to pass, when Jesus had made an end of commanding his twelve disciples, he departed thence to teach and preach in their cities.”

Johnny was so startled by the station he’d stumbled onto that he paused.

A little over a year ago, before the church fire, before he killed Bob in the park with his switchblade, before he’d gone to the drive-in with Dallas and Ponyboy and met Cherry and Marcia, before all of this, he and Ponyboy used to go to church together. They went usually on Sundays, but sometimes they went to the evening service on Wednesdays. Either way, they would sit in the back of the congregation, listening silently to the pastor’s sermon.

Then they’d made the mistake of taking Soda, Steve, and Two-Bit with them and, after the rowdiness they displayed that ended in them getting kicked out, that had been the end of that.

But if Johnny were completely honest, he missed going to church. He’d enjoyed those times. He’d usually closed his eyes, listening to the pastor’s words, trying to drink them in as much as he possibly could, forgetting, for the moment, everything bad or wrong or unbearable currently going on in his life. He’d felt calm then, content with the world, sometimes even like he might be able to bear the hardships that had already happened or that he knew were eventually going to come his way.

He couldn’t be certain, but he thought that maybe that was what peace felt like.

He wasn’t entirely sure about his stance on God. He wanted to believe in a higher power, but after the way his life had gone, he had a hard time believing there was one. Especially one that allowed the children He claimed to love so much suffer in the way they did. One could argue that was the power of freewill and it wasn’t God putting him through these things, it was other people and a part of him did believe that, but another part of him, a more cynical part, thought that if God were truly all powerful, He would put a stop to this.

Johnny took another drag on his cigarette, blowing smoke rings out the window.

The pastor on the radio was now saying, “But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee. At that time, Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for it seemed good in thy sight.”

He reached over and turned the dial again, landing on another music station. This one was playing “I Should Have Known Better” by The Beatles.

 

_I should have known better with a girl like you_

_That I would love everything that you do_

_And I do_

_Hey, hey, hey_

_And I do!_

 

Johnny pulled his hand away from the dial, but his mind wasn’t really on the lyrics or the music.

Taking another long drag of his cigarette, he went back to staring out the window, Absently, he fingering the St. Christopher pendant around his neck that used to belong to Dallas.

It was a Wednesday. And the church service on Wednesday started at five o’clock sharp. Dallas would be home any minute and, though Dallas had been raised Catholic, he didn’t know if he’d be able to convince him to take him.

Ever since his mother had died, Dallas had vehemently not believed in God.

Johnny didn’t really blame him. He struggled with faith himself.

But something deep inside him kept screaming at him to go to church. That it was important.

His eyes shifted to the clock.

It was 3:50, almost 4:00. Dallas was due home in ten minutes. He’d ask him then.

* * *

“I’m goin’ home, Digger!” Dallas called, grabbing his leather jacket out of his locker and waving a goodbye behind him, ready to leave the garage and go home after a long day of work.

“Alright, Dal, be safe!” Digger called back from his place in his office with the always open door. It was his customary goodbye to all his workers when they left for the day.

“See ya, Dal!” Sodapop and Steve called in unison.

He turned for a moment to grin at them and wave before turning back around and heading in the direction of home. They waved back before returning to their work. They had the evening shift today whereas Dallas had the morning shift. He usually worked longer than was absolutely necessary, so he could bring home more money. He needed to now that he had to provide for not only himself but Johnny too and Johnny, though through no fault of his own, cost more than the average person, being disabled and frequently sick.

He watched his shadow bounce across the pavement as he walked home, listening to the sound of the cicadas in the trees as the sun beat down upon the world. The garage had been cool with the shade it provided and the fans Digger kept in every corner of the building, but leaving the garage, Dallas was hit with the full force of the day’s heat and, within a few minutes, he’d sweat through his white tank top and his work uniform. He’d have to wash them both when he got home.

Dallas enjoyed working at the garage. It was good pay, the hours were reasonable, and, for the most part, he liked the people he worked with. His boss was a good man and he got to see Sodapop and Steve every day or every other day.

However, the best part of the day was still being able to go home to Johnny, to run to him and gather him up in his arms and breathe in his scent of cigarette smoke, honey, and vanilla. And he’d been able to do that every single day for the past year. And it was still just as heavenly the hundredth time as it had been the first time.

It had been a hard year. Johnny had nearly died more times than Dallas could count on one hand, but he’d survived every time. And now they lived together in the perfect little house, still in the same neighborhood as the rest of the gang and got to see all of them regularly.

A year and a half ago, if you had told Dallas he would be living with Johnny now and they would be together in every way he’d ever dreamed of, he would’ve thought you were pulling his leg. He might even have punched your lights out for suggesting he was queer in the first place.

But the truth was, Dallas had been in love with Johnny since he was thirteen years old.

He’d come back from New York and seen the tiny scared kid he’d known before he’d left had grown up into a beautiful young man and he’d fallen for him hard, loving him ever since.

He’d tried at first to convince himself that he didn’t love Johnny at all. He slept with every girl that would give him the time of day, trying to ignore the way he replaced their faces with Johnny’s in his mind when he did. He drank so much he forgot his name and tried to forget Johnny’s too and told himself over and over again that the reason he wanted to make Johnny laugh, hold him when he cried, and tell him he loved him was because he was his friend, his best friend. And that’s all it was. Nothing else. And when he couldn’t convince himself of that, he used the long switchblade he’d stolen from Buck Merrill to carve away his sadness into his arms, telling himself that the real reason was he just liked making himself bleed, liked seeing his own blood. He got in fights too, letting other people hurt him for the same reasons.

But in the end none of it had worked.

And in the end it turned out that was okay.

Because Johnny loved him right back.

And now here they were, together and happy, something Dallas had never even thought possible. Not for him anyway. He was Dallas Winston, the angry hood that loved no one and nothing and never had anything good in his life and if by some miracle he _did_ have something good, it was ripped away from him in the most painful way imaginable right after he’d grown unbearably attached to it. To think that now he had all he’d ever wanted in this small white house in the middle of the street – and not only had it, but had been able to keep it – was still, to him, surreal.

He rounded the corner, pulling out his pack of cigarettes as he did so and lighting one, with difficulty, using a matchbook. He blew his smoke at the sky as he made his way up the ramp the gang had built when Johnny still mainly used a wheelchair to get around. He pulled out his keys and unlocked the front door, pulling his cigarette out of his mouth long enough to let out the whistle the gang had invented years ago to signal when it was one of them and not a stranger.

But it turned out it didn’t really matter anyway.

The Beatles was blaringfrom the radio in the bedroom (now playing “Can’t Buy Me Love”) and he doubted Johnny had heard him over the noise.

Dallas walked slowly to the bedroom, his cigarette dangling from his lips. When he reached the entryway, he stopped and leaned against the doorjamb, smiling around the cigarette.

Johnny sat on the small chaise he’d gotten cheap at that rummage sale a few months before spring began, his chin resting on his arms, folded on the sill, staring out the window. There was a still-smoking cigarette between the middle and forefinger of his right hand. Every now and then he brought it to his lips, taking a drag before blowing the smoke out the open window and going back to his original position, continuing to stare at something that Dallas couldn’t see.

There were two completely used cigarette butts sitting on the sill next to him. If he were anyone else, he would’ve tossed them outside, but Johnny didn’t do that. He saved them and even picked up the cigarette butts of others to throw away later.

When Dallas had asked once why he did it, Johnny had given him a puzzled look before replying as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, “So animals don’t eat em and get sick.”

It was then, more than any other time in his life, that Dallas had realized just how _good_ Johnny was. He picked up after others so animals that most people didn’t even believe had feelings or souls wouldn’t get sick and die. He even refused to kill insects when they were in the house, instead insisting upon taking them outside, no matter how gross or ugly they were.

“They have feelin’s too!” he’d insisted when Dallas had told him it didn’t matter.

In some ways, Johnny was too good. He still felt guilty for killing Bob, Dally knew, despite all the horrible things Bob had done to him before his death. He even felt guilty for testifying at his parents’ trial when doing so had gotten them a fifty year prison sentence. In Dally’s opinion, they both deserved what they got and he’d tried to explain that to Johnny too, but he couldn’t seem to believe it in the way that Dally did and, he knew, though he didn’t always say it, he still beat himself up over it.

Johnny moved again, bringing his cigarette to his lips once more, bringing Dallas out of his thoughts of the past to focus, once again, on the present.

There was something extremely beautiful about Johnny like this that Dallas couldn’t name. Maybe it was the way he was so completely relaxed, something he rarely was with how high his anxiety levels always seemed to be, even after all of the things causing that anxiety had disappeared. Or maybe it was how silent he was, appreciating the sound of the music of his favorite band along with the world outside, something he’d never gotten to do in his own home before.

Whatever it was, Dallas didn’t want to disturb it and it took him a long time before he finally said, in a voice much quieter than usual, “Hey, Johnnycake.”

Even with how quiet, he was, Johnny still jumped and turned a little more quickly than he would’ve if he hadn’t been startled. Immediately, Dallas felt guilty. He should’ve announced his presence better. Johnny still got scared easily and, he knew, there was a chance he always would.

Johnny blinked several times as though coming back to himself before he finally swallowed hard and said, “Hey, Dal. How was work?”

Dally shrugged, throwing his leather jacket down on the bed. He walked around it and sat down on the edge closest to Johnny, clasping his hands in front of him. “It was alright. Just work, y’know.”

Johnny nodded, looking at the floor as he did so, but said nothing else, slowly going back to staring out the window. He took one more drag of his cigarette before putting it out on the sill before setting the butt next to the others.

He didn’t have to say anything for Dallas to know something was on his mind.

He thought about asking him about it, but it was a roll of the dice whether Johnny would actually tell him what was going on or not, so he waited.

It turned out waiting was the right move.

“Dallas,” he began, not looking at him, something in voice telling Dally he was worried about his reaction might be to whatever he was going to say, “I wanna go to church tonight.”

For a moment, Dally wasn’t sure he’d heard correct. “What?”

Johnny turned to him then. “I wanna go to church. Tonight.”

Dally swallowed hard. He wanted to say no. He hadn’t set foot in a church since his mother’s funeral when he was eight years old and he’d promised himself he never would set foot in one again. He hated God for all He’d put him through – and even more for what He’d put Johnny through – and he didn’t want a relationship with that higher power if He even existed.

It surprised him Johnny even wanted to go. How could Johnny still believe in God after all he’d been through? How could he want to? He knew that Johnny used to go to church with Ponyboy, but that had been before the church fire. Before...everything.

“You sure you wanna go?” he finally asked.

Johnny nodded. Then said in soft voice, almost pleading, “Please, Dal.”

Dally sighed. He couldn’t say no. Not when Johnny asked like that. And he asked for so little.

“Alright,” he said, looking at his shoes, feeling on edge already. “When does the service start?”

Johnny glanced at the clock. It was four-fifteen now. “Forty-five minutes.”

Dally nodded. “Good. That’ll give me time to shower.”

Johnny nodded as well and went back to staring out the window.

Dallas walked slowly to the bathroom, still smoking the cigarette he’d lit at the end of the street, still trying to fully comprehend what had just happened. He slowly closed the bathroom door behind him, slowly turned on the shower, let the room fill slowly with steam as he sat on the edge of the tub, not even getting undressed yet, not even really smoking his cigarette anymore, just letting it smoke down to the butt, wasting all that nicotine.

Why did Johnny want to go to church now? Why hadn’t he wanted to before now? Or had he wanted to and just been afraid to ask because he knew that Dallas wouldn’t want to? That sounded more likely. Johnny always thought of others before himself. It was that fact more than the way he’d asked to go to church that had made Dallas say yes to begin with.

Johnny truly did ask for very little.

And if he wanted to go to church tonight, Dallas could suck it up and deal with it.

As long as it was just this one night.

Dally really wasn’t sure he _could_ survive it if this became a regular thing.

* * *

Johnny leaned heavily against his cane, shuffling slowly with the rest of that night’s congregation into the small white church on the edge of town. He was holding onto Dally’s hand under the guise of needing him for balance, but the truth was he was just as nervous as Dally was to be going into a church, especially now after everything that had happened.

It felt wrong. Living in that church with Ponyboy had felt wrong enough, even though it had been little more than an abandoned ruin when they came upon it.

Murderers weren’t welcome in churches. One of the ten commandments was, after all, thou shalt not kill. It didn’t matter what the court said or what Dallas said or what anyone said, at the end of the day, the fact remained that Johnny had killed someone and that made him a murderer.

He stared up at the church’s facade right before he walked through the propped open double doors It looked foreboding from this angle, the pure white steeple looming so high above him, the single circular stained glass window depicting Christ’s birth glinting in sunlight of early evening.

 _You don’t belong in my house,_ it seemed to say to him. _You’re a sinner. And it’s been far too long. You can’t repent._ _Not anymore._

Johnny swallowed hard, closing his eyes as he pulled them eyes away from the steeple and stepped with Dallas into the crowded church.

Even with the fans blaring in every corner of the building, it was still unbearably hot inside. Too many bodies packed too tight together in too small of a space.

“Where d’you wanna sit?” Dallas asked, bending down to speak softly in his ear.

Johnny scanned the church interior with his eyes for a moment before finally nodding towards a nearly empty row of pews at the very back of the church. “There,” he gasped out, already feeling claustrophobic with how many people there were around him. Swallowing hard, he clutched his cane and Dally’s hand in white knuckled grips, trying hard to keep them from shaking, as he headed towards the aforementioned pews.

Johnny sat down much harder than he might have otherwise, trying hard not to wince as the impact jarred his fragile spine. Dallas sat down much more gracefully next to him and looked around the church, saying quietly, almost to himself, “Nice place. For a church.”

Johnny looked around as well. It _was_ nice. The walls were lined with stained glass, each window depicting a different significant event in the life of Christ. There was a second large circular stained glass window behind the pulpit, which depicted Christ’s crucifixion.

There was something about it that made Johnny unable to tear his eyes away from the image.

Maybe it was the way there was a halo of gold around Christ’s head, signifying his holiness. Or maybe it was his serene expression, despite the pain he very clearly must have been in. Whatever it was, he couldn’t tear his eyes away until the front doors slammed shut and the pastor, standing at the head of the congregation, said, “Good evening.”

The congregation quietly echoed his greeting.

“I know last time we were talking about the gospel of Luke,” the pastor began, his voice quiet, calming. Johnny closed his eyes, shutting out any other outside stimulation, focusing only on the man’s voice. “But I wanted to talk to today about the book of Matthew. Particularly chapter eleven. Allow me, if you would, to read to you from that now.”

There was a rustling as the pastor opened his Bible and turned to the correct pages.

“After Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee.”

Johnny’s eyes snapped open almost immediately.

This was exactly what he’d heard on the radio earlier in the day. It was different wording (most likely the pastor was reading from a different version of the Bible), but it was, without a doubt, the same passage he’d heard on the radio.

He swallowed hard. What did this mean? He realized it could mean nothing at all, but that didn’t sound right, even just thinking it. He felt like he was missing something here and this Biblical passage he’d now heard twice in two different ways was some sort of clue.

When the pastor reached the part Johnny had changed the radio station (“But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you. At that time, Jesus said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.’”), Johnny took a sharp breath and as he did so a sudden pain pricked the palms of both his hands. He winced and let out a gasp at the shock of it, bringing them quickly up to his face, trying to see what had caused it, but he saw nothing. His hands were just red as if irritated. But there was something about the irritation, the redness, that, like the stained glass of Christ’s crucifixion, he couldn’t pull his eyes away from.

“Johnnycake?” Dallas asked in a whisper. “You alright?”

Johnny pulled his eyes away from his palms with difficulty, blinking at Dallas for several moments as he processed what Dallas had asked before he swallowed hard and nodded slowly, just as slowly lowering his hands back to his lap as he said, “Yeah. Yeah I’m fine.”

But something had happened and, though he didn’t know what it was, he felt it was important.

Later he would think back on this and realize he’d had no idea just how right he was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is gonna be the next big fic i focus my attention on. i'm not really sure what i'm gonna do for the next chapter as of yet, but i guess we'll see. 
> 
> also i originally heard this bible quote in the 2018 movie mary magdalene, which if ya haven't seen it pls watch it. it's the only religious movie i've ever seen that i really love/enjoy and it's tone is the tone i want this entire fic to have, except with a subtle southern gothic feel. so yeah!!


	2. Al-Maghtas and Bethabara

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the end, it was the crosses that made Johnny decide to start going to church regularly again. And it wasn’t just one or two. They were everywhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OOO BOY THIS TOOK SO LONG CAUSE I WANTED TO DO IT RIGHT AND I AM REAL HAPPY WITH THE RESULT!!!!
> 
> also pls listenta broken crown by mumford & sons for the beginnin' of this and leaving home by johan johansson for the end (startin' when the river...well just the river i don't wanna give nothin' away). they both fit perfectly.

_Sunday, August 22 nd, 1965 9:06 a.m._

_Tulsa, Oklahoma_

In the end, it was the crosses that made Johnny decide to start going to church regularly again. And it wasn’t just one or two.

They were everywhere.

He saw them in shop windows with an American flag backdrop when he was out with the gang.

He saw them on people’s window sills, the curtains billowing around them like the breath of angels, when he sat staring out his own during the day, the radio now always turned to the station with the faceless, nameless preacher on it.

He saw them affixed to telephone poles and lampposts, covered in chipping white paint.

He saw them as whitewashed memorials by the side of the road, surrounded by dead flowers.

He saw them hanging from the ends of multicolored rosaries that dangled from people’s rear view mirrors as they drove by. Sometimes he saw them attached to the cars’ dashboards instead.

Everywhere he went, every time he turned around, he saw another one.

It was almost as if overnight everyone in Tulsa had decided not only that they believed in God, digging out their old crucifixes and placing them where they knew he would see, but as if these displays were meant for him and him alone. It seemed he was the only one that noticed all the crosses anyway. And this seemed to make them subtle signs that whatever God was watching over the world wanted him to rekindle whatever faith he’d buried deep inside him when he’d given up on Him as a child.

A part of him wanted to tell that God to _fuck off_. He wasn’t going to believe in Him again until he got a few questions answered first. For starters, where had He been when he was being beaten by his mother? Molested by his father? Where had He been every time the Socs found him and held him down and beat him and assaulted him worse than anyone in his family ever had? Where had He been when his father’s friends had at him? Or when that beam fell on him in the burning church?

 _But He_ was _there,_ another part of him replied in a whisper in the back of his mind. _He was there when you were being beat and made sure you survived. He was there when the Socs assaulted you and made sure they stopped before they went to far. He was even there in the church and made sure Dallas came to save you before it was too late._

And he wanted so desperately to believe there was a higher power – that he _was_ being watched over – that this was the part of himself he listened to. And when he woke up on Sunday, just after nine in the morning, he already knew he would be leaving the house by ten-thirty to go to church for the eleven o’clock service. Whether he truly believed in God or not. Whether the crosses were really meant for him or not. Whether Dallas wanted to come with him or not.

He was going to go.

And that was all there was to it.

Without looking, he reached for the cigarette pack on his nightstand. He pulled one of the cigarettes out, lighting it with the zippo lighter, all the while staring unblinking at the ceiling, his mind racing as he thought about the dream he’d had the night before.

Johnny always dreamed. He had ever since he was a small child and when he heard as he got older that people only had eight dreams in their lives, he knew that wasn’t true because by that time he must’ve had hundreds. Maybe even thousands.

And they were all different too. Every single one different in either scenario, location, or cast of characters. Sometimes all three. He found it odd that he sometimes visited the same places in dreams, but not with the same people and never with the same story line.

He’d never told anyone about these dreams, not even Dallas, thinking they might find him weird or crazy if they did, considering how much credence he gave the dreams to his waking life. But he did write them down, detailing every inch of them in a journal he kept by his bed, getting frustrated when he couldn’t remember certain parts that he’d found so important when he was asleep.

Every once in a while, he would read back through the dreams. Most of the time, just to enjoy, again, the world he lived in while he was asleep. Sometimes to try to glean some sort of meaning from what had happened in that shadow world that very often felt just as real as the waking world.

However, the dream he was thinking about now had been different from any of the others.

And, if he were completely honest with himself, fueled his desire to go to church today.

He couldn’t remember more than small snippets of it, but what he did remember felt, for lack of a better term, profound.

In one of the instances he could remember, he’d found himself in a garden, a beautiful garden that seemed to stretch on forever. He’d seen a woman there, a woman who he swore looked just like Dally’s mother before she died. She’d laughed with him and said something to him and, though he felt it was important, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t remember what it was she’d said.

In another, he’d found himself back in the church, staring at the exquisite stained glass, watching as the images came to life, playing out the scenes they were depicting. He couldn’t remember much else from that part of the dream except looking up at the ceiling and seeing a bright golden light that filled him with a sense of calm and peace he knew he’d never experienced before in his life.

There was more – a field of crosses, rivers running red with blood, mobs of angry and desperate people, a grave site with hundreds of people kissing the stone that marked it and crying – but none of them were as clear or significant as the first two.

He took a drag of his cigarette, blowing the smoke at the ceiling, watching it curl around itself before slowly dispersing. He felt he should write down the dream, what he remembered of it anyway, but no matter how many times he told himself to get up, to get his notebook and pen and write down all of it, every inch of it, he couldn’t make himself. He seemed stricken by the dream, immobilized by everything it could mean.

Turning his head slightly, he could see Dally’s sleeping profile and the digital clock on his nightstand, which read 10:02. If he wanted to go church, if he wanted to take Dally with him, he was going to have to wake him up now.

Taking one last drag on his cigarette before setting it on the edge of the ash tray on his own nightstand, he propped himself up with one elbow, placed a trembling hand on Dally’s shoulder and gently shook him, saying quietly, “Dallas….Dallas, wake up.”

Dally let out a soft moan, burying his face deeper into the pillow.

Johnny shook him again. “Dallas...please...”

Dally let out a huff, turning slowly, so he was facing Johnny, half of his face still buried in the pillow, what was visible of his hair sticking up every which-way. “What is it, Johnnycake?” he asked, his voice rough from sleep.

“I wanna go to church today,” he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.

When Dallas said nothing, Johnny looked up and swallowed hard, realizing only then what he was asking of Dallas.

Johnny had issues with God because of the way his life had been, but Dally did too and, whatever beef he had with the man upstairs, went far deeper than Johnny’s because, while Johnny still _wanted_ to believe in a higher power, Dallas was more content in knowing there wasn’t one. If there wasn’t a higher power, then there was nothing that could’ve been done about his mother, the kindest woman he knew, dying so young. There was nothing that could’ve been done about Johnny, the love of his life and the most pure-hearted soul he’d ever found, being tortured most of his life and nearly dying more times than either one of them could count.

And it was written all over his face.

Etched into the prematurely deep lines of his forehead, carved into the way his lips pressed tight together, shaded around the dark circles under his eyes, sketched into way his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard, processing the question.

And it wasn’t really fair, Johnny realize, to ask that of him.

Johnny had been through a lot, but Dallas had been too. It wasn’t fair to put him through more.

He was opening his mouth to tell Dallas it was alright, that he didn’t have to come with him, that he’d be okay going by himself, but Dallas cut him off.

“Alright. What time is the service?”

Johnny glanced at the clock again. “In a little less than an hour.”

Dally nodded, turning his head, pressing his face into the pillow as he stretched cat-like. “Okay. I should get up then. Gotta shower before we leave.”

Johnny watched as Dallas sat up slowly, his hand running through his sleep-tousled hair. He watched him stretch his arms above his head, one hand reaching to rub his shoulder as he stood, grabbing his own pack of cigarettes as he stumbled towards the bathroom and the shower. Moments later, the shower turned on, the sound of water hitting the porcelain tub like sheets of rain audible through the wall.

He turned, throwing back the blankets, letting his legs dangle over the side of the bed as he picked his cigarette up again and took a drag.

He looked up, blowing the smoke out the window this time.

There was a porcelain cross in the neighbor’s window, the silk curtain billowing into the black room behind it, its shining face catching the sun as it rose over the treetops, telling the world to _wake up,_ _wake up,_ _a new day_ _is_ _beginning_.

* * *

A direct parallel of Wednesday evening, Dallas sat again on the edge of the tub, watching the mirror cloud over, watching the tiled walls begin to sweat, watching his cigarette smoke mingle with the steam that billowed into theroom from burning water, until he couldn’t tell one from the other and his eyes glazed over and saw nothing at all.

If he were to be honest with himself, he felt he should have seen this coming.

In the four days since the evening church service, Johnny had been saying strange things.

“There’s crosses everywhere, Dal,” he’d said quietly one night as Dally was trying to fall asleep. Johnny had been smoking, blowing smoke rings at the ceiling and the statement came seemingly out of nowhere. “I see them everywhere. All the time.”

He didn’t elaborate on what that meant and Dallas had been too tired to ask, but he felt, now, that he probably should have.

“The clouds are stars and the stars are shining,” he’d said another time. More so than the wording, the odd part about this statement had been he’d said it on cloudless night while they were staring up at the stars in the lot, a fire burning in their handmade fire pit to keep them warm.

Again Johnny hadn’t elaborated and Dallas hadn’t asked him to, but sitting in the steaming room, thinking about it now, he felt again that he should have.

He’d even caught him one day drawing stars on his palms in black permanent marker, stars with eight points that looked like asterisks at the end of sentences, promising more. He’d frozen in place, watching it happen, unsure of what to do or say, terrified of what it all could mean. It had been far too long after that Johnny had turned to him slowly, blinking at him, a blank expression on his face as though he were in a trance...or just coming out of one.

There were other things he’d said too – “The stars are clouds that burn”; “The rain is broken snow”; “The crosses are the eyes of God, I know they are” – and each new statement made as little sense as the last. And yet, somehow, Dallas felt they were all significant, that they all meant something or were leading up to something and that he wasn’t going to understand a single one of them until whatever that something was started to happen.

He knew that was as odd of a thing to think as the statements themselves were, but he couldn’t shake the feeling no matter how hard he tried.

Everything was connected. What to, he just didn’t know.

The steam was so thick now he was choking on it.

It tasted like acid rain and all the sorrows he’d tried to bury deep in his chest.

It was for mostly selfish reasons he didn’t want to go to the church again. The last time he’d been there had been the day of his mother’s funeral and going there again had been like reliving the memory all over again in high-definition.

He’d seen the procession of mourners, all in black, shuffling into the sanctuary, heads bowed, a few sniffing back tears or pressing handkerchiefs to their faces to staunch the flow of them. He’d smelled the Easter lilies. There had been so many of them they’d covered the dais and the pulpit until you couldn’t really tell that you were in a church. He’d tasted the stale sugar cookies he’d tried to force himself to eat at the reception afterwards. He’d felt the itchiness of the tuxedo his father had made him wear, something Dallas found ironic considering it had been his father’s actions that had ultimately killed her. And he’d heard the deafening silence, a grim reminder that he would never hear his mother’s laugh again or her soft voice singing him to sleep again or even the quiet sound of her tears as she cried to herself when she thought he couldn’t hear her.

The idea of going back was too much to bear.

And yet, he’d agreed to it.

Because Johnny had asked and he couldn’t say no to him.

He put the end of his cigarette out on the edge of the tub, reaching the fingers of his free hand back to feel the burning water, letting it burn the tips a bright, blistering red.

And yet Dallas felt a foreboding deep in his heart, some sort of nameless fear he couldn’t place the origin of. Something that told him, despite all the evidence, that going back to the church was the start of whatever it was that would make Johnny’s words make sense. But, somehow, he knew – just as he knew the sun would set and the moon would rise – if Johnny’s words started to make sense, if this _thing_ started, it would be the beginning of the end of everything else.

 _But you have to let it begin,_ that same part of him whispered. _It is inevitable._

Dallas didn’t know what to think about that.

If he were completely honest with himself, he didn’t know how to feel about any of this.

And the worst part was he didn’t even know what was happening. Or going to happen.

After a lifetime of the unexpected usually meaning something bad, this made him nervous in ways he couldn’t fully explain to anyone who had not experienced such things first hand.

Dally stood, pulling his shirt off from his shoulders with his burned fingertips, ignoring the pain that flared outwards from the burns, telling himself bitterly, _Johnny experienced way worse during the church fire. You can deal with this for a few seconds._

But even as he thought it he felt like whatever punishment he was about to go through for not protecting Johnny the way he should have was only just beginning.

Because that’s what this was, he realized. It had to be.

He’d had one job and he couldn’t even do that right and now he had to be punished for it.

He stepped into the shower, letting the water burn him all over for a good thirty seconds before he finally turned the knob, letting himself cool down slowly.

Whatever this was, it was his fault. It had to be. And he had to suck it up and take it like a man.

It wasn’t until he shut the water off completely and stepped out, the room still filled with steam, that he realized his shoulder blades still ached.

Like he’d been carrying sticks on his back for years.

Like he’d never even taken a hot shower to begin with.

* * *

There were more crosses on the way to the church. Johnny counted them as he walked.

The porcelain one in the neighbor’s window with the silk curtain backdrop. There were three little red dots in the center of the cross that he could only assume were meant to be roses.

Another forged from gold, hanging from a rosary that was wrapped around the rear view mirror of a car parked out in front of one of the houses they passed.

One hanging crooked over someone’s front door. There was a weathered Christ carved into the front of the wood. It was a stark brown against the house’s whitewashed exterior. Whoever it belonged to hadn’t even bothered trying to paint it.

The silver one he always saw in the thrift shop window. The American flag was still there too.

Three more of various make and size in the windows of neighbors.

Two more on rosaries in car windshields. One gold, one silver. One with red rosary beads, another with beads the color of the sky. That one seemed much more holy to him.

Two balancing on car dashboards. One wobbled back and forth as the car drove past. The other stayed still and looked like it had been super-glued in place, though the car went by so fast he wasn’t entirely sure. Not even when he squinted for a better look.

There was even one on the grill of a car, covered in what looked like gold leaf, the details of the Christ carved onto the front lost in all that golden splendor.

There was one that belonged to a roadside memorial. The dead flowers were still there, a few of their petals blowing across the pavement of the sidewalk and into the street, crushed to dust by the tires of passing cars. Johnny winced as he watched this happen.

The last one he saw before he stepped into the church was two feet tall and nailed to the top of a telephone pole. It had at one time been painted pure white, but now the paint was chipping and the face of Christ was worn almost completely away by years of countless rainstorms.

But that wasn’t what Johnny saw.

He stared up at it, squinting into the morning sun, one hand raised to shield his eyes, the other clutching his cane as he leaned on it for support, seeing Christ’s face, full of agony and acceptance. And also an unimaginable peace.

The stained glass window above the pulpit in the church flashed through his mind.

They looked exactly the same.

“Johnnycake, c’mon, we’re gonna be late.” Dally’s soft voice in his ear.

Johnny turned slowly. Including the cross on the telephone pole, that was fourteen crosses.

He paused as he stepped into the shade the steeple of the church cast.

For just a moment he swore his shadow on the sun-heated asphalt looked like a cross too.

That made fifteen.

* * *

For the first time, Dallas noticed the crosses too. It was impossible not to with the way Johnny was silently counting them as they walked, turning his head every time he saw one. Dally watched him tally them on his fingers, his mouth moving without making noise.

_One. Two. Three. Four, five. Six. Seven._

It amazed Dallas just how many they were.

It amazed him even more he’d never noticed them before.

He stopped at fourteen, even pausing to stare up at that final cross nailed high above their heads to the telephone pole. Even Dallas couldn’t keep his eyes away from it. There was something intrinsically holy about it, even with its chipping paint, weathered Jesus, and industrial backdrop of wires above and splintered wood below.

But there was something unsettling as well and Dally leaned down, his lips against Johnny’s ear as he said quietly, “Johnnycake, c’mon, we’re gonna be late.”

He didn’t want to go into the church. He didn’t want to sit in the too-warm congregation for three hours, listening to a preacher tell him things he would never believe anyway. But he wanted to continue looking at that cross even less.

The sanctuary, buried deep in the belly of the blindingly white church and its towering steeple, was much more full on Sunday than it was on Wednesday, and within minutes, Dally was covered in a thin layer of sweat. This was something he felt he should’ve expected, and yet, it surprised him even as he looked around the pews, still filling with stragglers ten minutes after the service was supposed to start, the piano near the pulpit still playing wordless hymns as they found their seats.

He and Johnny had chosen a spot at the back of the church again, but this time there were strangers on either side of them, strangers that gave them dirty looks when they saw their greasy hair and faded jeans. Dally glared right back. He didn’t care if they were in a church. Especially since it sure seemed like these people didn’t.

And anyway, wasn’t one of the verses of the Bible _Judge not lest ye be judged_? How come that seemed to apply to everyone except those who needed it most?

Finally, the piano petered out, the pastor appeared, taking his place behind the pedestal on the pulpit and the service began.

Dally didn’t hear a word of it. Not even the gist of it. And this was on purpose.

He’d meant it when he said he’d given up on God years ago. He refused to go back on that now, refused to let this pastor draw him in with his false promises. Especially when he knew better.

He stood when the rest of the congregation did. He pretended to sing along to the hymns, listening without really wanting to, to the piano echoing throughout the sanctuary, bouncing off a hundred bodies, each one begging for a different kind of salvation without speaking the words at all. He sat with them and stared up at the pastor or around the church, looking at the fractals of colored light that shone in through the stained glass, created an exquisite rainbow of light across the floor and across the faces of everyone in the congregation.

But really he wasn’t taking any of it in.

The only thing he _did_ take in was Johnny, his serene expression of absolute calm, something Dally truly could not remember having ever seen before. Johnny listened to the sermon with his eyes closed, he stood and sang along to the hymns without opening them.

Something about it all was unsettling.

Like the appearance of the cross on the telephone pole outside.

Like the feeling of foreboding he’d had during his shower that morning.

Again the image of Johnny sitting on the couch, his palms crossed by black eight-pointed stars he’d drawn himself came to Dally’s mind.

It all meant something. Of that much he was certain.

But he didn’t know what. And, no matter what he tried to tell himself, no matter how many times the pastor at the head of the congregation talked about letting God’s path for you take its course, no matter how many times the pastor promised it would all be okay in the end, Dallas didn’t really think that it would be.

Not ever.

Not even at all.

* * *

The service ended slowly for everyone else, but for Johnny it was over all too quickly. It seemed he was closing his eyes one moment, listening to the pastor’s sermon, getting lost in the words of forgiveness, the music speaking of holiness, and the next he was opening his eyes again, the world taking on a tint of blue as his eyes adjusted from having been shut for so long.

He watched everyone stand as they all began making their slow way out of the colorfully illuminated sanctuary to the dull grey outside world. He turned slowly to Dallas, blinking away the spots that appeared in front of his eyes, a slight smile on his lips.

But whatever happiness Johnny felt was slowly sapped away as he saw the look on Dally’s face.

He looked stricken, horrified. And, though Johnny knew all the reasons why that might be, there was something about his expression that told him it had to do with something else entirely.

“Dallas?” His own voice sounded foreign, almost wrong, in his ears. “What is it?”

Dally swallowed hard and shook his head, the stricken look never leaving his face. “It’s nothing,” he said, finally looking away as he spoke, looking at his fingers.

Johnny stared at them.

They were shaking.

“Let’s just go home, Johnnycake,” Dally said finally, looking up, a tight-lipped smile on his face.

Johnny nodded. The sanctuary was almost empty by now. He leaned heavily against his cane as they shuffled sideways through the small aisle created between their seat and the pew in front of them. When they reached the wider aisle, Johnny stopped and turned, looking up at the stained glass above the pulpit, the bright luminous image of Christ on the cross.

He couldn’t help himself.

_Sixteen._

He mouthed the word without even breathing, his eyes never leaving Christ’s face.

“Johnny, c’mon, man,” Dally said quietly, gently tugging on his arm. “Let’s go home. I promise that’ll still be there when we come back.”

It wasn’t until they were outside, the sun beating down on them as they headed towards home that Johnny realized Dally already knew they were coming back.

Johnny counted the crosses on the way home too.

The first was in another shop window, but this shop was closed down, the inside all ripped out. There was nothing in the shop, nothing in the window, except a single porcelain cross, similar to their neighbor’s. This one was missing the roses.

The next had been nailed to a telephone pole above a small collection of bouquets of dead flowers, burned out candles, and stuffed toys, all surrounding a photograph of someone he didn’t recognize. Another memorial.

The third wasn’t really a cross at all. It was a telephone pole, broken halfway down, the arms of the cross still clinging to the wires above it, the broken bottom lying in the yellowed grass below.

Johnny stopped to stare at it.

An accident, then. And that made it all the more significant.

He blinked and suddenly he saw, clear as the image in front of him, Christ nailed to that cross, His blood dripping down the wood to the ground. He saw the agony on His face, but also the acceptance, the knowledge that this was what had to be done. He saw him heave and breath and open His eyes, looking right into Johnny’s and it felt as though He could see into his soul.

Johnny gasped and staggered back.

His feet got caught around each other as he moved and he felt himself begin to fall.

Strong arms caught him. He looked up, half expecting to see the face of Christ again.

But it was Dallas. Of course it was Dallas.

What he’d seen was just an illusion.

It wasn’t real.

Just a trick of the light. Just caused by the heat of the day.

Not real at all.

“Johnny,” Dallas breathed out, the stricken look back on his face. “You okay?”

Johnny nodded.

They were almost home, just passing by the vacant lot, one street away from their house, when Johnny saw the trail leading into the nearby woods. He paused, staring down the path. The trees grew so close together that during the summer it shut out almost all of the sunlight, only dappled bits got through here and there.

Dally was still walking and it took him a minute to realize Johnny was no longer next to him. Once he did, he paused and turned, staring at Johnny staring down the path. “What is it?”

Johnny turned to him and pointed wordlessly at the trail. “Let’s go down there.”

“Why?” Dally drew his brows together. “Don’t ya wanna get home?”

Johnny nodded. “Yeah, but...I wanna go down there first.”

He couldn’t say why, but it was important he did.

Dally seemed to see something in Johnny’s expression and started back towards him. “Alright.”

Thanks to the shade of the trees, the path was much cooler than the road had been. Johnny looked up at the trees, watching birds flit from one to the other. He paused more than once to watch a small animal leap through the dead leaves of all the autumns before or pick up cigarette butts people had thrown onto the trail. Sometimes he had to wade through the leaves to get to them. The ground was rocky and hard to navigate with a cane, but he did it anyway.

If animals ate cigarette butts they got sick and died. He wasn’t going to let that happen, knowing he could very easily prevent it.

The trees thinned out a bit the farther they went on the path. Eventually, they could hear a river somewhere off to their left and, as the trees thinned further, they could even see it.

And that was when he saw it, nailed to a tree like he’d known it was going to be there.

A white painted cross, stark against the brown bark it was attached to.

Johnny stopped walking again and took several steps towards it, his ever-shaking fingers reaching out to touch its surprisingly smooth face, his expression nothing short of reverent.

What was a wooden cross, this pristine, doing out here in the woods? There were no flowers beneath it, no picture or candles or stuffed toys, nothing to pronounce it as a memorial. It was just a cross, a lone white cross with no specific purpose or significance.

_Except that it’s here. Down the path I randomly chose to go down._

His fingers connected with the cross face, his eyes shut, and the world fell away.

 

_It was_ _a very hot_ _summer._ _T_ _he sun beat down upon the earth as though trying to scorch it._

_The water Johnny waded in was cool and soaked the tunic he wore from the waist down._

_He stared up into the face of_ _a man with golden brown skin and hair as black as his own. Johnny’s h_ _ands_ _were_ _balled into fists beneath the surface of the water, his mouth set into a determined line, his brows drawn together,_ _squinting against the glare of the sun_ _._

_“I wish to be baptized by you,” he said, looking up into the bearded man’s face._

_The man looked surprised. His dark eyebrows rising up into his dark hair, his_ _dark_ _skin shining with sweat, despite the chill of the water they stood in._

_“_ _I need to be baptized by_ you _,” the man replied. “And yet you ask to be baptized by me?”_

_“Yes,” Johnny said without hesitation, blinking away the black spots the sun shone into his eyes. “This is the way it should be._ _T_ _he right way.”_

_The man nodded only once._

_Johnny took a step forward._

_The man placed his hand on the back of Johnny’s neck, the other on his chest._

_He dipped him into the water._

_Johnny had to remember not to gasp at the sudden cold enveloping him._

_The man pulled him out of the water just as quickly._

_“I baptize you with water to cleanse you,” he said quietly._

_He dipped Johnny again beneath the surface. Johnny closed his eyes, holding his breath. Less than a second later, he was pulled back up, the warm sun shining on him, warming him instantly._

_“I baptize you with light and with fire.”_

_One more time the man let the water wash over him, covering him completely._

_One more time he pulled him back up into the bright light of day._

_“I baptize you to be born anew, awake, and ready for the day to come.”_

_Johnny looked up at the man and smiled._

_They walked together out of the river, Johnny wrapping himself in a white cloth, covering himself completely, shivering slightly from the sudden warmth after the bitter cold._

_A dove alight on his shoulder and a voice whispered in his ear: “This is my Son, whom I love. With him, I am well pleased.”_

_Johnny smiled at the dove and reached out to stroke its breast._

 

All at once the world came back to him in a blinding rush of color and deafening sound.

Johnny blinked several times, gasping for air as he opened his eyes.

He was soaking wet. And Dallas was above him, looking panicked, his hands gently tapping Johnny’s cheeks, his fingers running through his dripping hair.

“Johnny! Johnny, wake up!” he was saying over and over again, his voice high-pitched and frightened. “Wake up, man! Oh god, fuck! Wake up, Johnny! Please!”

Johnny blinked a few more times, droplets of water dripping off the ends of his eyelashes, down onto his face. Dally closed his eyes, letting out a heavy sigh of relief as he sat back, covering his face with his hands. For several moments, he sat that way, saying nothing, doing nothing, just shaking and gasping for air.

“Man,” he said, finally, pulling his hands slowly away from his eyes, “Don’t you ever do that again, okay? You _know_ I ain’t a good swimmer.”

Johnny looked at Dally confused, sitting up slowly.

His palms ached bad as he pressed them into the leaf-covered ground.

“What’re you talkin’ about, Dal?”

“You _know_ what I’m talkin’ about,” Dally replied, his words ever so slightly clipped around the edges. “Don’t wander into the river like that again, okay? I know ya can swim better than me, but when ya collapsed like that...and...didn’t come up...” He took a sharp breath, looking away again. “Just don’t do it again, okay? Just promise me you won’t do it again?”

“Dal, really, I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, okay?” Johnny said, lifting his hands.

The leaves stuck to them. They were still wet.

Without looking, Johnny began trying to pick the leaves off his hands. But they still ached. He had a hard time getting the leaves off.

Dally turned back to him. “Just –”

But that was all the further he got.

His gaze shifted to Johnny’s hands. And then his eyes widened and lips parted and Johnny looked down at his palms to see what it was Dally was so amazed by –

And froze completely.

His palms were bleeding, dripping crimson all over his jeans, all over the leaves around him.

All over everything.

He picked the last of the leaves away, ready to deal with whatever had punctured them, whatever had caused such damage.

But there was nothing beneath them.

Nothing except two perfect circles of bright red.

Johnny let out a small gasp, the words coming back to him all at once.

_This is my Son, whom I love. With him, I am well pleased._

That was when his nose started bleeding too.

* * *

When Johnny stopped in front of the cross, Dallas stopped too and pulled out his pack of cigarettes, ready to chain smoke himself into immediate lung cancer after having to sit in a church for three hours. Three interminable hours during which he’d had every chance to think over all the reasons he couldn’t and didn’t want to believe in God.

But he never got that chance.

Something strange happened when Johnny touched the cross. And, even now as they were walking home, Johnny wrapped in Dally’s leather jacket to keep from catching cold, his hands wrapped – temporarily – in strips Dallas had torn from his own shirt, he still didn’t know what it was.

All he knew was one minute he was leaning up against a tree, smoking, watching Johnny touch the cross out of the corner of his eye and the next he heard Johnny’s cane drop, almost silently, into the leaves that still crunched beneath their feet.

At first, he thought Johnny had fallen and he looked up immediately, ready to rush to him, ask him where it hurt, take him home and maybe, if it was necessary, take him to the hospital too.

But Johnny stood, seemingly without any effort at all, without his cane, his back to Dallas.

“Johnny?” He took the unlit cigarette out of his mouth to speak.

But Johnny didn’t reply. He only began walking forwards. Through the trees. Into the water. His hands held out on either side of him at waist height, his palms turned towards the sky.

Only later would he remember the slant of sunlight that burst through the trees for just a moment before he began walking, illuminating Johnny in what he could only think of as holy light.

Heaven’s light.

“Johnny, don’t,” he called out, taking a few steps forward, watching him wade into the river. “You’re gonna get swept away by the current. Or catch cold.”

But it was as though Johnny couldn’t hear him and he kept going, kept wading into the river, his palms always held just above the surface of the water, until he was waist deep.

And then it got scary.

For a moment, he just stood there, the water rushing around him.

And then he collapsed beneath the waves.

Dally didn’t think, didn’t consider, didn’t even remember really that he couldn’t swim.

He dropped his unlit cigarette, the pack, and the lighter to the forest floor and sprinted forwards, diving into the current, his eyes open wide beneath the cool water, searching for Johnny through all the dirt and grime. He didn’t come up for air, not until he had Johnny in his arms, and could begin dragging him to shore, trying not to think about how heavy he felt, how long he’d been under the water, how, whether he wanted to admit or not, this was dead weight he was carrying.

He pulled him up onto the riverbank, panic flooding him when he saw his closed eyes, his parted lips, and no movement, none at all. He couldn’t even tell if he was breathing and, goddammit, he didn’t know how to do CPR.

“Johnny!” he began saying, his voice an octave higher than normal, his hands tapping his face just hard enough to wake him, but not to hurt him. “Johnny, wake up! Wake up, goddammit! Please! Johnny! Johnny, wake up! Wake up, man! Oh god, fuck! Wake up, Johnny! Please!”

And then he let out a gasp and he blinked his eyes open and Dallas almost collapse from relief.

He barely remembered what happened after that. He barely remembered berating him, begging him not to do that again. The moment he saw Johnny’s palms, the two perfect circles, bleeding out carmine like he’d struck a vein, all thought, all memory was wiped clean from his mind.

He knew what it was. He’d been raised Catholic. He knew damn well what this was. But he refused to say it out loud. Refused to even think it.

Doing either one would make it real. And this couldn’t be real. It couldn’t.

Because, if it were, that would make the inevitable fate real too. And Dally couldn’t accept that. He refused to even try. He would _not_ wrap his mind around this. It didn’t matter it was happening right in front of him. If he ignored it, it would go away. And if it didn’t go away…

No. He refused to think about that too.

Numbly, he picked up his leather jacket he didn’t even remember shrugging off and wrapped it around Johnny’s shivering shoulders. Then he tore the bottom of his shirt and wrapped the strips around Johnny’s bleeding palms, trying not to think about the way he’d walked into the water, his palms up, seeming – even without being able to see his face – so serene, so calm.

So holy.

_No. Not that. Not that. Notthatnotthatnotthat._

Everything made too much sense now.

The counting of the crosses, the things he’d been saying, the way he’d looked in church.

The way he’d paused to stare at the stained glass on their way out.

Dally’s own feeling of foreboding.

It all made too much sense.

As he opened the door to their house, he ushed Johnny inside and to the bathroom. He unwrapped the dark fabric, already soaked through with (Johnny’s) blood and, before he got the gauze and rewrapped them, before he convinced himself, once again, that this wasn’t happening, he thought the word, the cause, the _fate_ , just once.

_Stigmata._

It took everything in him not to collapse in on himself and start screaming right there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really have no clue what's gonna happen in the next chapter or what to do for it, but if y'all have any suggestions feel freeta leave em in the comments. in case ya haven't noticed i am...sorta havin' this mirror jesus's life.


	3. Ramah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something about Johnny knowing what the cross was unsettled him. But this whole thing was unsettling. He still wouldn’t say the word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well this fuckin' was NOT meant to take this long. but i had a horrible week last week (5 mental breakdowns in the span of 3 days yay!! :D /sarcasm), so this didn't even get planned out until two days ago. anyway i hope ya like this!!

_Thursday, August 26 th, 1965; 2:03 p.m._

_Tulsa, Oklahoma_

“Dallas! Snap out of it, man!”

Dally jumped nearly a foot in the air, too startled by the voice to even be angry they’d called him Dallas. He blinked rapidly, looking up and around quickly as the world slowly came back to him. He looked away just as fast when he noticed that everyone in the garage had their eyes on him, their brows drawn together, each of them blinking right back at him. He didn’t know which one of them had spoken and he swallowed hard, shaking his head as if to clear it, his hair that was getting too long, falling into his eyes as he did so.

“I’m fine,” he mumbled to his shaking hands, going back to wiping the grease off them with the blue towel he didn’t even remember going to grab.

The garage was dead silent, the only sound coming from the cicadas beating their wings ouside.

Still without making any noise, Sodapop appeared at his elbow. “Dally,” he said quietly.

This broke whatever spell had been cast on the garage by whoever had shouted. The garage was once again filled with the quiet sounds of everyone working.

Only no one spoke.

And Dally didn’t look up.

“What’s going on?”

Soda’s voice was quiet, barely audible over the cicadas and the soft clink of metal car tools.

Dally shrugged and shook his head, scrubbing uselessly at his already clean hands.

They were starting to become red and raw.

“Nothing,” he lied.

He knew without looking that Soda didn’t believe him. He could almost see the way he would draw his brows and press his lips into a thin line, chewing on the edges of them, nervously pulling away the dry skin with his teeth.

But Soda said nothing else and a moment later he drifted away.

Dally heard soft voices, words he couldn’t quite make out.

He didn’t need to turn and look to know they were talking about him.

Dally blinked and images from the past four days flashed through his mind.

Johnny’s bleeding palms, covered in dirty, wet leaves from the forest floor on the first day the wounds appeared, the rest of him drenched in river water.

All of the bandages he’d bled through since then, piling up in the trash in the living room and the kitchen and the bathroom and the bedroom.

Johnny shaking his head, his eyes closed and holding out a hand, refusing everything Dally made him, even if it was his favorite dish, even if he hadn’t eaten in days.

Johnny’s skin, pale and clammy. Feverish and almost translucent.

The tired smile on his lips that was meant to be reassuring, but ended up being so much less than that every time Dally asked if he was alright, if he was hungry, if he was in pain, if he was tired.

Johnny sleeping more than he ever had before, through the morning, through Dally’s alarms, through Dally crashing through the house on purpose, just to see if he could somehow wake him.

Johnny looking dead in sleep.

And then there were the crosses.

He’d seen them before the wounds appeared, of course, and Dally had seen Johnny counting them, seen the one on the telephone pole, the one made out of the broken telephone pole, the one on the path in the woods near the river he’d walked into where it all began.

But these crosses were different.

The first one had been by the side of the road. Dally still couldn’t remember what they’d been doing out so late in the first place, but they drove by it: a wooden cross, outlined by a string of multicolored Christmas lights.

It had been too dark and they’d been driving too fast to see exactly what it was, but Johnny had watched it, even turning in his seat to keep his eyes on it, until it went out of sight.

Once they’d turned a corner and it was gone, Johnny turned back around, his gaze sliding slowly back to the windshield.

He was quiet for so long Dally didn’t think he was going to speak. Then: “It was a church sign.”

Dally didn’t say anything, but he didn’t know how he could’ve known that. They’d gone by so fast and it was so dark out, if it hadn’t been for the Christmas lights, Dally wouldn’t have even known it was a cross to begin with.

Later, he went back to it on his way home from work one day.

It was a church sign.

He’d swallowed hard, his hands shaking, staring at the sign, at the words carved into the center of the cross, his vision blurring.

Something about Johnny knowing what the cross was unsettled him.

But this whole thing was unsettling.

He still wouldn’t say the word.

The second cross had been one made of porcelain roses in a thrift shop, just as large as the one with the Christmas lights they’d seen by the side of the road.

Going to the thrift shop had been necessary. Johnny’s blood was getting on everything and staining everything and they both needed new clothes now.

New clothes and new dish towels and new towels and more bandages. Always more bandages.

Dally had been looking in the home goods. He’d told Johnny go to look at the clothes, pick out what he wanted, but when he’d gone to gather him and check out, he’d found him instead only a few feet away, staring with glassy eyes at the porcelain cross, leaning up against the whitewashed wall of the shop. His hand was gripping his cane hard and blood was seeping through the bandages, dripping down the cane’s shaft to the ground, creating a small pool of crimson.

Johnny couldn’t take his eyes off the cross and Dally couldn’t take his eyes off the pool.

Neither of them moved until a worker told them they needed to clean up Johnny’s life – _blood –_ off the floor. It was a bio-hazard.

Neither of them knew how long they’d been standing there.

Neither of them spoke about it later.

The whole thing was unsettling.

And Dally still wouldn’t say the word.

The third one had been on the path again.

Dally would’ve been happy to never go down that path again, but Johnny wandered down it after church on Wednesday without saying a word. This time he stopped in front of a tree with a cross carved right into the bark.

It was halfway to the riverbank, but the river was still audible from where they stood.

Johnny stared at it, his head tiled to one side in thought. Then he dropped his cane into the leaves and pressed his palms together and bowed his head. His lips moved soundlessly.

Dally stared at the cross too, mouthing his own two word prayer.

_Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you._

He wouldn’t say the word. He _wouldn’t_.

The fourth and fifth ones they’d found in an abandoned house.

The house hadn’t been abandoned for long, a few weeks at most, but in that short time it had become a hangout for the greasers in the area, all of them ignoring the ‘KEEP OUT’ notice the police had plastered on the front door, stepping through the CAUTION tape stretched over the entrance an around the windows, each of them shuffling into the living room to smoke together, play cards together, get drunk together, and spend the nights talking together.

Johnny didn’t like it because he couldn’t look up and see the stars.

Mostly the gang and Tim Shepard’s outfit spent their time there, but every now and then greasers from other parts of town would show up too. Darry and Tim tried to keep everyone from dealing drugs in the house, not wanting the cops to show up and slap handcuffs on all of them, but they could only enforce this rule if they saw the deals taking place and most of the time they didn’t.

The house was all but empty.

There were two torn up couches in the living room, an old wooden table surrounded by splintering chairs in the dining area, the appliances were still in the kitchen, and the bathroom was intact, but other than that the house was empty. Even the wallpaper had been stripped from the living room and hallways.

The place looked like it hadn’t been lived in for far longer than a few weeks.

Long before the church fire, long before Johnny broke his back, losing the majority of his mobility, him, Dally, and Ponyboy used to go hunting through abandoned houses, seeing what long gone residents may have left behind, seeing if there was anything useful they might be able to take home. Each of them had their own shelf in their rooms of all the things they’d gotten over the years from various abandoned homes, factories, and convenience stores around Tulsa.

So naturally when they first entered the abandoned house two streets over from their own, they searched the house high and low, looking for new treasures.

But the house was barren.

Whoever had cleared out the house had done a thorough job. There wasn’t anything left, even in the basement and the attic. Dally and Ponyboy converged back in the sparse living room, staring at the couches with the springs poking through the rips in the cushions, waiting for Johnny to return.

But he didn’t.

And he still didn’t.

And finally they had go searching through the house to find him.

But it seemed that somehow, he was as elusive as the treasures they’d been so hoping to find. They called his name until their voices went hoarse, a mantra that became steadily more panicked as the seconds ticked by with no answer.

It was Dallas who finally _did_ find him.

He was standing in what must have been one of the bedrooms, but you couldn’t tell that’s what it was now. There was nothing in the room. The floorboards had been stripped of their carpeting and what wallpaper hadn’t made it off the walls, hung in loose strips that trailed to the splintered floor.

“Johnny.” Dally’s voice, full of breathy relief. “We were lookin’ for ya, man, why didn’t ya ans –”

But then Dally was level with Johnny, was able to see what it was staring at on the floor and he swallowed hard, his hands curling into fists, his fingers beginning to tremble.

It was a cross, made of what looked like wheat, held together with twine.

That alone would have been unsettling enough, but right next to the first cross was a second one made out of a hole in the brick of the house itself. It looked as though the brick had crumbled away, completely by accident, and left the cross-shaped hole in its place.

The whole thing was unsettling.

And Dally still refused to say the word.

The garage came back to him slowly. And he was still standing, still rubbing his now red-raw hands with the soft blue towel. He turned just as slowly, waiting for the world to come back into focus before he took several slow steps towards the car they were supposed to be working on and, without really thinking about it, took a wrench from Fix. He leaned over the hood of the car, twisting something into place with the wrench, not seeing the car, not thinking about what he was doing.

When Dally had been a small child, he’d believed in God.

He’d believed in Him so firmly that he thought sometimes he could hear God’s voice in his head, telling him everything was going to be okay when he saw no reason to believe that at all.

But then his mother died.

Died because his father beat her and she was too sick and she couldn’t take it anymore.

And then he knew everything _wasn’t_ going to be okay. And the voice in his head wasn’t God. It was just his imagination.

He felt this all over again when Johnny was paralyzed after the church fire and he saw all the pain he went through as a direct result of the injuries he’d received in the fire.

What kind of God would allow someone as good and kind as his mother to die so horribly?

What kind of God would allow someone as pure and sweet as Johnny to suffer for so long?

The only explanation was this: There was no God. And people were just monsters that hurt each other because they could. There was no rhyme or reason to it. And there was no way to stop or change it. It was just how the world turned.

He put the wrench aside, wiping his sweating brow with the back of his hand, already covered in grease again. The fans in the garage barely helped dispel the heat that leaked in from outside. He pulled the carburetor apart. He handed the pieces to Fix and braced himself against the hood of the car, staring into the hood of the car, his eyes unfocused.

He still couldn’t see what was right in front of him.

Despite his feelings about God, he’d been to church three times in the last week and, though he hated it every time, he went because Johnny didn’t.

It was almost strange, he thought, that Johnny could still believe in God, could still _want_ to believe in God after everything he’d been through.

Dally supposed part of his reasoning for not believing in God could’ve had something to do with all of the things that had happened to him, but he was a bad person and he knew that bad things happened to bad people.

It was the bad things that happened to Johnny and his mother that didn’t make sense.

He closed his eyes.

He saw Johnny with his hands clasped and his head bowed in prayer in front of a cross carved into the tree in the woods.

He saw Johnny staring at a cross covered in Christmas lights, watching it, turning in his seat to watch it, until it was out of sight.

He saw Johnny, hardly noticing as his life dripped from him onto linoleum in a thrift store, staring at a cross made of beautiful porcelain roses.

He saw Johnny, motionless, silent, staring at a cross made of wheat and twine, propped up against the wall of an abandoned house next to a cross made when brick crumbled away.

Johnny saw God in ways Dally only wished he could.

And it was all because –

His hands clenched into fists, his lips pressed into a tight, thin line.

He would _not_ say the word.

He went back to working on the car.

The last hour of his shift passed in a daze, his mind slipping in and out of the present moment.

It had been four days since Johnny’s palms started to bleed. It felt more like four weeks.

When Digger finally told Dally he could go home, his shoulders slumped, his eyes closed and he let out a heavy sigh, only able to think, _Finally._

He got his jacket from his locker, waving goodbye to whoever was left in the garage, and stepped outside into the sweltering August heat.

And froze almost instantly.

There were heat waves rising off the asphalt. Sweat was beading on his forehead and upper lip. And the cicadas buzzed loudly in his ears.

But he registered none of this.

Leaning up against the side of the garage was a cross.

It was made out of rusting Oklahoma license plates.

Dally shuddered, his shoulder blades burned and ached. His hands shook.

This whole thing was unsettling.

He wouldn’t say the word.

No one could make him.

Not even God.

* * *

There was nothing on TV at three in the afternoon. Everyone was either still at work or just barely getting home from school or not even home from school yet, so there was nothing on. Nothing except the same six infomercials and same three unimportant news bulletins and Johnny was tired of hearing about the weather (he knew it was hot out), sports (he didn’t even know how to play basketball), and whatever insignificant town event that had happened that everyone found so monumental.

He lay in the living room, his fingers wrapped awkwardly around the remote control Dally had stolen from a nearby convenience store shortly after he’d lost the ability to walk. He couldn’t exactly get up and down to change the channel, so Dally worked around that. Remote controls for televisions were something only the Socs had. The fact they managed to get their hands on one was a big deal.

He pressed the button to change the channel again for the third time in the last minute, pressing his lips tight together as pain radiated from his hands up his arms as he did so.

The holes in his palms hurt bad. It truly was a wonder he could hold the TV remote at all.

It had been four days since the river.

Four days since his palms, covered in leaves and river water, began to bleed.

Four days, four hours, and four minutes.

Four fours.

So much had happened since then. And it felt like it had been so much longer.

Little moments stuck out, stark against the other moments around them.

The cross covered in Christmas lights, how he’d been transfixed by the colors, unable to pull his eyes away until they were gone, out of sight completely.

Dally cleans his palms and rewrapping his hands over and over again until Johnny was sure it would be Dally’s fingers who fell off from sheer overuse.

The odd fear and strange peace he’d felt, standing in the thrift store, staring at the porcelain rose cross, hardly noticing his blood dripping down the shaft of his cane to the floor until a sales associate told him it had to be cleaned up.

The cross carved into the tree, the overwhelming need to pray when he’d see it.

Waking up in the dead of night, gasping for air, struggling to keep from waking up Dallas as his palms hurting so bad he could barely see, barely breathe.

The look of fear in Dally’s eyes every time he saw his palms, every time he saw another cross.

The cross made of wheat and twine, the only loose object left behind in the abandoned house.

The word that hung between them that neither of them wanted to say out loud.

And Johnny did know the word.

He hadn’t been raised Catholic like Dally had, but he liked to read.

It didn’t take much hard research to figure out what this was. Even if he hadn’t already known.

He knew what was going on.

But his reasons for not saying the word out loud or at all were completely different from Dally’s.

While Dallas was afraid of it – and Johnny knew he was afraid of it; he could see it in his eyes – Johnny simply couldn’t believe it was happening. How could someone like him – a murderer – be chosen for something like this? And it happened to only the most devoted, the most holy. He was neither of those things. So why him?

He didn’t want to think about it too much, terrified if he did this gift would be taken from him as quickly as it had been given to begin with.

Johnny pressed the channel changer again, this time landing on a cooking show. The people on the screen were making some sort of cake, but Johnny was hardly paying attention, his thoughts still swirling around the word and everything it could mean. He didn’t really know what kind of cake it was. It looked like chocolate.

He pressed the button again, landing this time on the news channel, which was still talking about the weather. Pain flared up his arm. He set the remote down on his chest. He needed to rest his hand whether he wanted to or not. It was starting to throb from the pain.

He reached over his head, behind him for his pack of cigarettes and the matchbook lying on the end table. He pulled out one of the cigarettes, struck one of the matches against the side of the matchbook, and held the flame to the end of his cigarette.

He inhaled, watching the cherry ignite before shaking his hand to put out the flame.

He dropped the match from the pain this caused, unable to stop himself from wincing loudly.

His cigarette fell from his mouth onto his chest. He put it back in his mouth with his other hand, then looked over the edge of the couch a moment later, holding his throbbing hand against his chest, to see the match he’d dropped had been extinguished.

Good thing too or the carpet might be on fire right now .

He wasn’t sure he’d be able to put it out with how much pain he was in.

Lying back on the couch, only half listening to the weather report, he blew smoke rings at the whitewashed popcorn ceiling that seemed to soar so high above him.

First, there had been the vision. He knew what it was now.

He hadn’t read the Bible, but he knew.

Then, though he didn’t remember it, he’d waded into the river, without his cane, his palms turned towards the sky and, a moment later, he’d collapsed beneath the waves and Dallas had jumped in to rescue him. He’d awoken then, cold and shaking, on the forest floor, staring at the sky, Dallas in a panic beside him.

Not long after that, they noticed it: his palms were bleeding.

_Why me?_

It wasn’t the first time he’d thought it. And he was sure it wouldn’t be the last because he still couldn’t come up with a good reason.

He still didn’t dare say the word.

Even with the pain, it was still too good to be true.

“This just in: we have breaking news that the drive-in restaurant in town known as The Dingo has just been bombed.”

Johnny sat upright so quickly his head spun, his eyes wide, his lips parted, his heart pounding out a rapid staccato rhythm of shock and fear.

He picked up the remote that had fallen, turning the volume up as high as it would go.

“The death toll at this time is currently unknown,” the reporter on the television was saying, “but it’s estimated to be well over twenty people, possibly reaching into the thirties or forties or maybe even fifties as the blast occurred during the most busy part of the day.”

The camera cut away to the smoking remains of The Dingo, shown from above.

It had been leveled. You could still see small stick figures of bodies scattered around and inside the ruins of the restaurant. Johnny swallowed hard, imagining any one of them as Two-Bit or Sodapop or Ponyboy or Steve or Darry. It couldn’t be Dally, he knew. He was at work. He’d been at work all day.

The camera returned to the reporter.

“It seems that the young man responsible has just been caught,” he was saying now.

The camera cut away again, this time showing a boy, who was clearly a Soc, being held back by three policemen as he strained towards the camera hurtling towards him. He was shouting, at first incoherently, but as the camera got closer, Johnny could just make out the vicious words over the voices screaming all around him.

“One of them is gonna ruin it for all of us!” he screamed into the camera, which was so close to his face now, everything was shaky and out of focus. “He’s gonna have powers none of us should have and he’s gonna say he’s chosen by God, but he’s not! It’s the devil’s work! He’s gonna ruin it! He’s gonna take away _all_ our lives! We gotta kill em all! We gotta destroy em all! All the fucking greasers!”

The camera cut back to the reporter, who was now talking about the potential charges to be brought against the young man they’d just shown. They didn’t say his name, since he was a minor and they couldn’t legally give away his identity, but Johnny barely heard any of that. The boy’s words were running through his head, over and over again on an endless loop.

_He’s gonna say he’s chosen by God._

_He’s gonna ruin it._

_We gotta destroy em all! All the fucking greasers!_

Was it possible this boy was talking about _him_?

Johnny took a sharp breath. That wasn’t possible...was it?

He let out his breath and shut his eyes and the world around him melted away.

 

_The man paced in a wide open room made of marble, his hands clenched into fists, his face set in a grimace. He wore leather sandals and a white tunic and golden crown upon his head of dark hair. He had a beard and dark skin and dark eyes. But everything about him seemed dark._

_Evil even._

_He had been deceived._

_He had asked the men, men he considered to be his own disciples, one simple thing: tell him where the child would be born. He hadn’t told them why he wanted to know, but evidently they’d guessed his purpose and now the child was gone to God only knew where._

_Something had to be done._

_Something drastic._

_Something he didn’t want to do, or so he told himself, but it had to be done._

_He stepped out of the room, opening both doors with his hands._

_“Kill them,” he told the men waiting outside the room. “Kill all of them. All of the boys two years and under. Every single one.”_

_The men looked horrified, some of them even protested, but he spoke over them._

_“I will_ not _be disobeyed! I will_ not _be deceived again! This child_ must _be destroyed_ now _!”_

_The men scattered, but he didn’t feel any better._

_This wasn’t the end._

_No._

_It was only just beginning._

 

Once more the world came back in a rush of color and sound that left Johnny gasping.

He was no longer on the couch. Somehow he’d fallen to the floor and he was holding himself up by his arms, his hands pressed into the floor, already staining the floor beneath them, already creating a squishy pool of carmine in the carpet.

His nose dripped blood too, creating a speckled pattern of red around the twin pools.

Somewhere behind him the door opened and Dally’s whistle sounded as if from far away.

“Johnnycake! I’m ho –”

But he broke off and Johnny turned slowly, seeing Dallas, rooted to the spot, his eyes wide, fearful, a look so unlike him to have.

Dally closed his mouth and swallowed hard.

He didn’t have to ask. He knew what had happened.

“What did you see?” he asked, his voice a whisper.

Johnny looked away again.

He didn’t reply. He hadn’t told Dallas what he’d seen last time either.

He wasn’t sure how.

And he wasn’t sure how to tell him now either.

_I saw something I shouldn’t have seen. On the news. In my head. What’s happening to me, Dal? Tell me what’s happening. Say the word. I know you know the word. Say it._

But he knew Dally wouldn’t, no matter how much he wished he would.

Because as much as the word excited him, he knew it terrified Dallas just as much.

* * *

As his whole day had been, Dally’s walk home from work was more of him floating through a haze of fog and somehow ending up at his front door rather than doing anything on purpose. And even then when he reached it, he stared at the door for a long time, blinking, trying to decide if he couldn’t remember how to unlock the door or if he was just afraid to go inside.

Inside was Johnny.

Johnny with holes in his palms that bled and bled and bled.

Johnny with a hollow stomach and indentations in his skin where his bones were.

And beyond that a word hanging over both of their heads that they both of them refused to say.

But he had to go in.

Whether he wanted to or not.

He had to.

With shaking fingers, he fumbled for the keys.

It took him three tries to get the key into the lock. It took him two more tries to actually turn it.

He whistled as he stepped inside, more of a muscle memory than a thought out action. He stepped through the hallway, the fog slowly fading as the surroundings of his home came into view.

“Johnnycake!” he called, shutting the door behind him. “I’m ho –”

But that was all the further he got.

Johnny was on the floor, looking as though he’d rolled off the couch. His head was bowed between his shoulders, his arms shaking from the effort of holding himself upright. He turned to look at Dally when he heard him call his name and Dally felt frozen, rooted to the spot by the intensity of Johnny’s gaze, full of something unnameable, unknowable.

 _He belongs to God now,_ something inside him whispered. _God and all his angels. You will never truly know him again._

Dally knew without asking what had happened.

Johnny looked exactly as he had after he’d pulled him out of the river and, though Johnny hadn’t told him what he’d seen, he _had_ told him he’d had a vision.

His nose was bleeding again too.

He closed his mouth and swallowed hard. “What did you see?”

Johnny turned away again.

It was useless to ask. He knew Johnny wouldn’t reply. And maybe there was no way to. Maybe what Johnny was seeing now was beyond Dally’s realm of comprehension.

But that didn’t stop him from wishing he would try to tell him.

Dally crossed the room in two long strides, helping Johnny back up onto the couch. There was a still lit cigarette on the floor. He set it in the ashtray on the end table, then turned back to Johnny.

He looked shaking, breathing heavily, his entire body trembling.

Dally placed one hand on his cheek. “Have you eaten?”

Johnny’s eyes flicked up to his. He already knew the answer before Johnny even said it.

“No.”

“I’m gonna make you dinner,” he said.

“Okay,” Johnny replied.

They both knew already it was a waste of time and food. But Dally did it anyway, trying to convince himself that maybe this time would be different, maybe this time Johnny _would_ eat.

He made BLTs. That was all they had ingredients for. Dally hadn’t been shopping yet this week.

He covered Johnny’s in extra bacon and mayonnaise. Exactly like he liked.

Johnny thanked him for it when he handed it to him as he sat down next to him on the couch.

He set it on the end table after that. Dally stared at it, already able to see how it was going to look in the trash when he threw it away later because he wouldn’t eat it and didn’t like mayonnaise as much as Johnny did.

“The Dingo got blown up today.”

Dally looked at him, his eyes wide, swallowing his food, before he asked, “What happened?”

“Some Soc blew it up,” Johnny replied. He was trying to sound casual, but Dally could tell by the way he picked at his sleeves as he spoke that he was scared to death. “He said that we haveta kill all greasers cause one of em is gonna come along and ruin everythin’ by claimin’ta be chosen by God.”

Dally didn’t say it and Johnny didn’t either, but he knew what they were both thinking.

Had the Soc been talking about Johnny?

“I-I meant to call everyone,” Johnny went on. “To make sure they were okay, but...somethin’ happened and then…you got home.”

“I’ll call em,” Dally said instantly, already standing. He wanted to think about something, _anything_ else other than what the Soc had said.

_Was he talking about Johnny?_

_What if he was? What does that mean? What does_ any of this _mean?_

He was already finished with his sandwich and he set the plate in the already full sink before going to the phone hanging from the wall.

He dialed Steve’s number first. Then Two-Bit’s. Then Darry’s.

Everyone was fine. And everyone seemed glad to hear from them too.

“Was anyone we knew in the blast?” Dally asked Darry. “D’you know?”

Darry was quiet for a moment and then said, “Yeah. Angela Shepard and her boyfriend were. A few of Tim and Curly’s other friends were too, but I don’t know their names. That person killed a lotta greasers, but...from what he said on TV that sounded like what he was tryin’ta do.”

Dally hung up not long after and walked back to the living room. “Everyone’s fine,” he said.

Johnny nodded, but he still looked worried. And Dally couldn’t blame him.

He was certain they were thinking the same thing now too.

If this was how people reacted when they didn’t know about the wounds in his hands, what was going to happen once they did? What was going to happen once it...progressed? What was going to happen if...other things...started happening? How were people going to react then?

 _You’re over exaggerating,_ he tried to tell himself. _You don’t even know for sure if this is –_

He wouldn’t even _think_ the word.

But everything else he’d thought had been right.

He _didn’t_ know for sure if anything else was going to happen, if this even _was_ going to progress. In all truth, he didn’t know for sure if he knew what this even was.

 _But you do,_ the same something from before whispered again. _You know_ exactly _what this is._

Dally wanted to scream, shout until he was blue in the face that this something was wrong.

But all he could do was swallow hard and stare without really seeing at the TV in front of him.

Because that something was right.

Even if he wouldn’t acknowledge it.

Even if he wouldn’t say the word.

He knew _exactly_ what this was.

And he knew exactly how it was going to end.

* * *

_Lightning forked across the sky, the crashing boom of thunder quickly followed._

_When the lightning flashed again, it was behind the gunmetal grey clouds, invisible._

_The flashes illuminated the world for seconds at a time, showing everything in flash motion._

_There were the men. And women too. Their ivory wings beating against the unforgiving wind, hurtling towards what they thought was victory only to be shot down into mortality._

_Falling, not to death, but from grace._

_There was no such thing as death for their kind._

_And all of this was against every law they ever knew, every code they’d ever been taught._

_It was wrong to fight against one another._

_But it was necessary._

_They flew in a huge arc, the lightning flashing behind them, showing them the way._

_Their adversary hovered over the golden throne, perched in the clouds as though they were made from more than just particles of water._

_He smirked._

_The warriors grimaced._

_They clashed._

_The battle continued._

_And those that fought continued to fall._

 

Dally woke up, sitting bolt upright in bed, his bare chest covered in a thin layer of sweat. He stared into the darkness around him with wide eyes, gasping for air, forgetting for a moment where he was.

_The lightning in the clouds._

_The warriors with wings._

_The adversary on the throne._

_The falling._

_Always the falling._

It had all felt so real. Like he’d been there. Like it wasn’t just a dream but a memory. Like he’d not just been a casual observer, but one of the warriors, one of the ones facing the man on the throne.

He knew how ridiculous that sounded. Even after just waking, even after the dream was so fresh and so _real_ in his mind, he _knew_ how ridiculous that sounded.

 _Who’s to say it is?_ That same something from before whispered. _Look at what’s happening to Johnny. What if what you saw_ is _a memory?_

But Dally shook his head, covering his face with his hands as he did so.

What was happening to Johnny was one thing, this was something entirely different.

This was something out of a science fiction novel.

He didn’t think they’d reached that level of insanity yet.

Throwing the blankets aside, he got out of bed, walking shakily to the bathroom without turning on any of the lights, not even the bathroom light. He only braced his arms against the sink and stared at his darkened reflection in the mirror.

His shoulders burned, aching like he’d torn all the muscles in his back all at once.

What was going on?

“Dallas?”

Johnny’s voice, so soft, Dally thought for a moment he’d imagined it.

Then the lights flicked on.

Dally blinked in the sudden brightness, turning to the doorway.

There was Johnny, his fingers still on the light switch, his other hand was holding a fuzzy blue blanket closed around his shoulders.

He’d already bled through the bandages Dally had wrapped around his hands before they’d gone to bed. The BLTs, watching TV, learning about The Dingo, wrapping Johnny’s hands before bed. That all seemed like so long ago. And in reality it had only been a few hours.

Why was his sense of time so skewed anymore?

“Are you okay?”

Johnny’s voice again, breaking through the silence like a battering ram.

Dally nodded. “I’m fine,” he said, forcing a tight-lipped smile.

Johnny pressed his own lips into a thin line, drawing his brows together.

He saw right through Dally’s lie.

“You’re in pain.” How could he speak so quietly and still be audible?

Dally looked at him. “How d’you know?”

He didn’t mean to say that. He meant to say no, but something else came out entirely.

Johnny moved towards him, slowly, as though in trance and Dally, unsure of what exactly what was happening, was motionless, unable to move, unable to stop him.

Johnny placed one hand on Dally’s chest and another on his back, right in between his shoulder blades. After a moment, his eyes fluttered shut.

After another moment, Dally’s eyes fluttered shut too.

At first there was nothing, just the warm feel of Johnny’s palms on his, the subtle wetness that came from his palms bleeding through their wrappings yet again. He’d lost count already of how many times he had rewrapped Johnny’s hands.

Then there was something else, a warm shock wave that started at the points where Johnny touched him and radiated throughout his entire body.

He couldn’t stop himself from staggering backwards, his eyes opening, as he felt it.

Johnny had fallen again. And again he was bracing himself on the floor by his shaking arms. When he turned to look up at Dally, he reached one of his hands up to touch his nose.

It was bleeding again.

It was only then Dally realized: the pain was gone.

Some strange feeling settled in the pit of Dally’s stomach, a chill that spread slowly outwards just as the warm shock wave had, as he slowly realized what had happened.

“You...” he swallowed hard, staring at Johnny with wide eyes, “You healed me.”

Johnny didn’t say anything. He only closed his mouth, swallowed hard and looked up at Dally, his finger still pressed to his still bleeding nose. Then, finally he spoke.

“What’s happenin’ta me, Dallas?” he whispered.

Dally knew what was happening. But he wouldn’t say it. And instead he shook his head, gasping for air as he replied, “I don’t know.”

Johnny’s face warped into a grimace. “You _do_ know.”

Dally only swallowed again, his hands curling into shaking fists.

He wouldn’t say the word. He wouldn’t say it. He wouldn’t, he wouldn’t, he wouldn’t.

“Say it!” Johnny screamed so suddenly Dally jumped. There was a ferocity in his voice and his words he’d never seen before. “Say it, Dal! Say it!”

Dally’s own face warped and he screamed it.

“ _Stigmata_!”

The bathroom was unbearably silent after that and neither of them moved for a very long time.

Eventually, Dally’s rigid posture relaxed and Johnny’s nose stopped bleeding and Dally helped him up, letting him lean on him as they went back to bed, neither one of them really able to sleep, but, when the sun rose, both pretending they had, not wanting to worry the other.

Later, Johnny would tell Dally when he’d shouted, his eyes had flashed gold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a rought plan for the rest of the fic now. there will probably be more to the fic than what i currently have planned out, but i'm glad i at least have a rough idea of what's gonna happen. also i realize that the massacre of the innocents happened long before jesus got baptized, but prepare for things to be out of order in this fic.


	4. Of Cana

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof i'm not sure how i feel about this chapter, but i'm still rly proud of this fic overall!!

_Sunday, August 29 th, 1965; 2:46 p.m._

_Tulsa, Oklahoma_

The church looked different in the afternoon than it did in the morning.

The light came in different, slanting strangely with the orange tint of evening in the rays broken by colored stained glass. There, too, was a quiet hint of autumn in the light, a the subtle reminder that the days were getting shorter and night was coming more quickly, that soon the air would be chilled and they’d be able to see their breaths in the morning when they stepped outside, gasping from the sudden snap of cold that always seemed to come unexpected.

Dally supposed that the place being full of people in black clothes with bowed heads, most of them covered in grease, added to the air of strangeness as well. He’d only ever seen it full of families, most of them middle aged, all dressed in nice, bright colors. And none of them wore hair grease. Not even Johnny. His bleeding palms had made the act of applying it impossible and he’d stopped trying after the first couple of days.

But he did notice the smell.

He could ignore it any other time, pretend it was just a figment of his imagination.

Even if it was overpowering. Cloying. Not truly something that even _could_ be ignored.

Even if it filled the house, the room, the building, wherever he and Johnny sat together. Both of them pretending they _could_ ignore it.

One of them thinking of a way to bring it up, the other praying he wouldn’t.

He never did.

But Dally knew that was only cause he didn’t know how.

It was just another inexplicable thing in a whole list of inexplicable things that had been happening since last Sunday.

And inexplicable things weren’t things they discussed anymore.

Especially if they involved Johnny’s wounds.

Especially if that thing was those wounds smelling like gardens.

_Like Eden. Like Easter lilies. Like roses._

_Roses._

Dally clenched his jaw, his lips pressing themselves into a paper-thin line as he curled his hands into fists, digging his nails so deep into his palms he could feel them breaking the skin, could feel the blood seeping through his fingers as he dug them in even deeper, ignoring the sharp pain.

He couldn’t stop himself from thinking it.

_Now both our palms are full of holes. Now we match._

But they didn’t. Not really.

Dally’s wounds were self inflicted.

Johnny’s were a symbol of something else.

Something inexplicable.

Something he refused to talk about. Not again. Not anymore.

 _You said the word,_ a voice reminded him.

He refused to think about that too.

They were at the church for Angela Shepard’s funeral. And the church was full of greasers.

From the look on the pastor’s face, Dally had a feeling this wasn’t a common occurrence.

The casket was open, sitting on a raised dais on the pulpit. From his vantage point, Dally could just see Angela’s face, her dark hair spread out on the silk pillow inside the coffin, her eyes closed. She wore a dress he was sure she’d never worn before. Angela Shepard wasn’t a girl who wore nice dresses or dresses at all, really.

It seemed strange to him that people always dressed their dead in outfits they wore in life. And never would have either.

The polished chestnut coffin was surrounded by flowers of every kind and color. Dally could only name half of them.

Naming them reminded him of his mother.

Of her funeral.

Of the dress she’d worn that wasn’t her own either.

Of the way her face had looked in her coffin.

Not even like she was sleeping. Just dead.

He stopped naming the flowers.

He took a breath.

The smell of flowers overwhelmed him and he gasped.

He breathed through his mouth.

Unable to help himself, he looked over at Johnny’s lap, his hands neatly folded in it. He could already tell he was going to have to change his bandages again once the funeral was over.

That was the third time today.

Already.

He’d started keeping track.

His gaze shifted up to Johnny’s face. He looked solemn, tired, and pale.

_From blood loss._

He ignored the words that whispered in his mind, not wanting to believe how true they were. If he did, he would have to admit that the human body only had so much blood in it. He would have to admit that Johnny was a small person with far less blood in him than most people. And if he admitted all of that, he would, too, have to admit that people needed blood to live and Johnny had already lost so much blood...how long would it be until there was none left?

He swallowed hard, turning away, his nails digging even deeper into his palms.

He pretended not to notice that Johnny’s eyes were not on the pastor and the pulpit.

They were on the circular stained glass of Jesus on the cross.

He pretended not to know why they were there instead.

_Sooner or later, you’re going to have to think about it._

Dally tried to ignore the voice, but this time he couldn’t.

Because it was right.

Dally’s approach to problems, especially big ones, had been to ignore them, thinking, while knowing differently, that would get rid of them, that they would dissipate, go away, vanish, if he simply pretended they weren’t there. He’d done that when his mother was dying. He’d done that when the first seeds of doubt sprouted in his mind that his “boyfriend” in New York was not as good as he had once believed him to be. And he knew, though he didn’t want to admit it, that he was doing that now, refusing to see Johnny’s ( _stigmata_!) affliction for what it was.

For what it was going to become.

For how it was going to end.

But, even as he did this, he knew he was going to have to face it sooner or later. This was Johnny and he knew enough about what was happening to know what was _going_ to happen. He’d been to church, he’d read the Bible.

He knew what happened to the man who healed people by placing his hands on people.

He knew how all of this would end.

He knew it.

Even if he wanted to pretend he didn’t.

Even if he wanted to ignore it.

Even if he really truly thought (hoped) that would make it all go away.

He knew where this was headed.

And that was why he didn’t want to think about it.

_“_ _And you love my son, don’t you?”_

The words popped into his head and suddenly, he remembered reading this, remembered the day his Sunday school teacher had read to them the conversation between Mary the Virgin and Mary of Magdala, remembered how it had taken place mere days before the death of Jesus.

Mary of Magdala had not replied, but Mary the Virgin had continued anyway.

_“_ _Then you must prepare yourself like me.”_

_“For what?”_ Magdalene had asked. Even now Dally could see the young woman as she must have looked, confused, her brows drawing together, blissfully unaware of what was going to happen to this man that she followed, that she listened to.

That she loved.

The memory of the Virgin’s reply broke him wide open.

_“To lose him.”_

* * *

Johnny didn’t really remember getting up that morning. It seemed like he had been asleep and then suddenly he had not only been awake, but already in the car, driving with Dallas to the church for Angela’s funeral. He hadn’t known her very well – he didn’t know any of the Shepard gang very well – but he felt obligated to go.

Especially since he knew her death was his fault.

“No, Johnny,” Dally had told him when he’d said this out loud for the first time. “It’s not. You know it’s not. You weren’t there. You didn’t do this. And that guy’s crazy he wasn’t –”

But Dally had broken off.

Even he wasn’t able to say for sure who that guy had meant.

Even he thought that maybe the guy really _did_ mean him.

Johnny hadn’t said anything else, but he hadn’t needed to.

And Dally knew he didn’t and he hated it.

Johnny could tell by the way he’d dug his nails into his palms.

Like he was doing now.

Johnny knew why too, even though Dally hadn’t told him. Even though there was no reason he should’ve known. But it seemed Johnny knew things he wasn’t supposed to now. And one of those things that he knew was the smell of flowers bothered Dally because he always smelled flowers now – the bandages around Johnny’s palms would reek of them once they came off; his palms would reek of them too, but they wouldn’t talk about either of those things.

The other reason was all of the flowers surrounding Angela’s casket reminded him of the last time he’d been in this church for a funeral and that had been after the death of his mother.

Johnny didn’t look at Dally once while he thought all of this. His gaze was fixated on the stained glass of Christ on the cross. His eyes always seemed to be inexplicably drawn there every time he came into the church.

It was another one of the inexplicable things they didn’t talk about.

Talking about it would’ve meant talking about everything else too and that was something Dallas was one-hundred percent determined not to do.

Johnny had thought that maybe that had changed after he’d shouted the truth of what was happening to him at him in the bathroom after he’d (inexplicably) healed his aching shoulder blades, but Johnny knew now he’d been wrong.

Every time Johnny had tried to bring it up in the days since, Dally had ignored him or left the room altogether, everything about him clenched, set into thin tensed lines that Johnny didn’t know how to break apart.

That he, quite frankly, didn’t want to.

It seemed like Dally was coiled, ready to spring.

Or explode.

Or break apart into more pieces than Johnny could figure out how to put back together again.

He didn’t want to find out which it was. He didn’t know what would happen if he did.

The resulting blast wave could leave more damage than the bombing of The Dingo had.

Damage that was far more lasting too.

And Johnny didn’t know if he had the strength to clean up that kind of ruination anymore.

It was like this gift had taken all of his strength from him and put it somewhere else, somewhere he couldn’t access it cause it was needed there more. And, to be honest, he wouldn’t have taken the strength back even if he could.

This was more important.

This was what he wanted.

This was all he’d _ever_ wanted.

This was a blessing.

Even if Dally couldn’t see it that way.

But, like he knew Dally knew as well, they were going to have to talk about it evnetually. As much as he knew Dally wanted to ignore it, wanted to believe that would make it all go away, he knew that it wouldn’t. And what was more, he knew Dally knew that it wouldn’t either.

Dally wasn’t stupid. He was just scared. And, really, Johnny couldn’t blame him.

Were the roles reversed, he would’ve been scared too.

It seemed strange to think that, all things considered, he _wasn’t_ scared.

Instead he was grateful. And for the first time, knowing all he knew, knowing all Dally knew, he saw as he did why that seemed so ridiculous.

Because he _did_ know what this was as surely as Dally did. He’d read the Bible. He’d read the beliefs of Catholicism during his days locked in the library when he was still in school.

He knew what (the word Dally still wouldn’t say and he still wouldn’t think) was.

He knew who Jesus had been.

He knew what had happened to Him

And he knew, just as Dally did, how it had all ended.

 _But you don’t know for sure if that will happen to you,_ he reminded himself, his eyes never leaving the face of Christ on the cross.

Again he was struck by how Christ looked so content, so very at peace with his fate that he must have known for weeks by the time it all came to pass.

And it was true. He really _didn’t_ know if that was going to happen to him. Not for sure anyway.

But he still wasn’t sure _that_ was true either.

Maybe he was afraid too.

Maybe he didn’t want to admit to things too.

Maybe he was running away too.

Maybe, just maybe, he _did_ know.

* * *

The pastor seemed to talk forever. And Dally barely listened to any of it, focusing on anything he could except the pastor’s words, trying hard not to remember the last time he’d heard him say them.

_Ten years ago._

_At eleven in the morning, not three in the afternoon._

_So many flowers._

_They looked like they were just going to bury_ her _on the dais among them._

_Black suit too tight._

_Father pretending to cry._

_Trying not to cry._

_Knowing they were gonna bury her._

_Don’t cry._

_I’ll never see her again._

_Don’t cry._

_She’s dead._

_Don’tcrydon’tcrydon’tcry._

The light in the church changed considerably, looking truly like the light of evening rather than early afternoon, and not even Dally’s clenched and bleeding fists could stop him from shaking like a leaf by the time the pastor was finally done.

When the entire congregation stood, Dally leapt to his feet, almost too eager to leave the church and head to the cemetery where they would watch Angela be put into the ground. He couldn’t stop himself from rushing Johnny out of the place, trying to convince himself as he did so that the smell of flowers would go away once they stepped outside.

And for a few moments it did.

Then they got into the stuffy car.

And it all came back.

The humid air, sitting stagnant for so long amplifying the stench by about a thousand.

Dally’s knuckles were white against the steering wheel the whole way to the cemetery.

He knew Johnny noticed, but he didn’t say anything and for that Dally was grateful. He wasn’t sure how he would’ve explained it anyway.

_I hate the smell of flowers, Johnnycake. They remind me too much of what’s already happened and what’s goin’ta happen and how much I can’t stop it._

But that would be acknowledging it and Dally had already determined he wasn’t going to do that for as long as he possibly could.

But without Johnny’s questions the car was horribly silent and that just gave Dally more time to sink deeper and deeper into his thoughts.

The stench was so strong now that even breathing through his mouth didn’t mask it.

With how fast they drove to the cemetery, Dally was shocked that the hearse carrying Angela’s coffin, her family, and the pastor still managed to make it there before them.

They were the first ones there otherwise.

Dally was almost angry the rows of chairs were already set out near the freshly dug hole in the ground. Helping set things up might’ve helped him forget why his palms stung and were still bleeding.

He sat in the back row, Johnny sitting next to him, his cane resting between his legs. Slowly, slowly, the rest of the congregation from the church arrived, filling every last chair around them.

Dally hardly noticed.

The stench of flowers was overpowering now. It didn’t seem to matter they were outside.

The stage in front of them again held Angela’s coffin, surrounded by the innumerable flowers.

The casket was closed now, Angela’s beautiful face gone from the world forever.

It was all too easy to remember how he’d felt when he’d seen them close his mother’s casket.

It didn’t seem to matter either how deep he dug his nails into his palms this time. This wasn’t something that he could easily forget.

The pastor spoke again. This time for much shorter of a time, but to Dally it felt just as long.

He couldn’t stop hearing the words _Ashes to ashes and dust to dust_ ringing through his brain once they were spoken like an endless mantra, even though he knew the pastor only said them once.

Then finally the service was over and he was watching with eyes glazed over as the men around the hole they’d lowered Angela in (he couldn’t remember standing, couldn’t remember going to gather around the hole, couldn’t even remember watching them do it) began to fill it in, while everyone except her family drifted away, already talking about other things, like she was already forgotten.

That had happened at his mother’s funeral too.

He’d hated every single one of the people who attended for it.

His mother had been the most beautiful, most kind person on earth.

And his father all but killed her.

And no one cared.

He would never forgive the world for that.

Not for as long as he lived.

_Will this be what it’s like when –_

But he broke off that train of thought before it could get any farther. He wasn’t going to entertain it at all. They were a long ways off from anything like that happening anyway.

There was always later to think about it.

He would have time to think about it.

At least, that was what he thought then.

It would be far too late before he realized he was wrong.

* * *

The Curtis gang had long since decided that they weren’t going to attend Angela’s funeral reception. It was Sunday. The day Darry cooked for the gang and they had dinner at his house. This didn’t happen _every_ Sunday. Only the Sundays where he had Monday off, but it was a dinner no one ever missed when it did happen.

Still. Johnny couldn’t help feeling guilty when he got up and followed Dally to the car and they drove to the Curtis’s place rather than the Shepard’s.

Johnny stared out the window, silent as the grave (and trying not to notice the irony in the metaphor) as they drove back to the Curtis’s place. It had taken him a long time to stop thinking about the stained glass of Christ on the cross and now as he sat in the car, remembering it all over again, he couldn’t figure out why he’d stopped thinking about it to begin with.

He had seen seventeen crosses on their way back from the cemetery.

He had seen twice that at the cemetery itself.

He hadn’t been counting on the way to the cemetery.

He’d been thinking too much about the stained glass.

About all of the colors, shining through the painted glass, dappling the floor of the church.

And, again, about the look Christ’s face. Peaceful. Content.

What would it be like to be so accepting of a fate so painful? Of death itself?

Johnny got out of the car slowly, leaning heavily on his cane as he made his way up to the Curtis’s house, up the front steps to the porch, through the front door that always slammed no matter how quietly anyone tried to close it.

Dally was behind him, he knew, but he wasn’t sure how close behind.

Dally’s mind was on another funeral.

Johnny wasn’t sure there was anything he could do to get him to stop thinking about it.

Everyone was already there when they walked through the door.

Darry was already cooking in the kitchen. Two-Bit and Steve had already broken out the beer and turned on the TV to some random news channel and them and Sodapop were sitting in a strange half-circle around the TV – Two-Bit and Steve on floor with their drinks, Soda leaning up against the side of the television set. They weren’t really watching what was on the screen anyway. Ponyboy was, uncharacteristically, helping Darry in the kitchen.

“Hey Dal!” Sodapop called, grinning at them. He didn’t drink beer, but he held a joint between his first and middle fingers. He blew the purple smoke out of the side of his mouth. “Hey Johnnycake!”

Everyone turned at Soda’s words and chorused their own greeting.

“Hey Johnnykid! Hey Dally!”

“Hey you greasers!”

“Ready for dinner?”

“Hey Dally, wanna help us make the potatoes?”

Dally blinked at this last question and it took him several moments before he shrugged off the jacket of the suit he was wearing and said in a flat tone, “Yeah. What d’you want me to do?”

Johnny watched Dally disappear into the kitchen before sitting down on the couch. He looked down at his hands and, in doing so, must have triggered Dally’s instinct to do the same. He paused halfway to the kitchen and said, “I gotta do somethin’ first.”

Johnny wasn’t surprised he didn’t say what and didn’t explain, even when asked, why he grabbed Johnny by the wrist, pulling him up off the couch and towards the bathroom. He didn’t bother asking Darry for bandages or even if he could use them. He already knew the answer.

And besides. If he was made to talk about it that would be acknowledging it.

The most amount of acknowledging he wanted to do was changing the bandages. And even then that was only because it had to be done. If he could’ve gotten away with not doing it, Johnny was sure he would have. Dally wished this were invisible as much as Johnny was glad it wasn’t.

The world became a series of actions after that.

Dally pulling Johnny into the tiny bathroom.

Dally shutting the door and locking it behind them.

Dally sitting Johnny down on the toilet lid.

Dally taking his hands and slowly unwrapping them.

Johnny noticing the way Dally wrinkled his nose as the floral smell became even more pungent.

Dally willing him not to mention it.

Johnny saying nothing.

Then: Dally grabbing the fresh bandages out of the medicine cabinet behind the mirror.

Dally throwing away the used bandages into the trash.

(Johnny wondering if the smell of flowers would still be there when they left).

Dally rewrapping Johnny’s hands as fast as he could, while still being careful.

Johnny holding back every wince that threatened to break his face into a grimace as even the soft gauze irritated his bleeding palms.

Both of them knowing they would do this all over again in a couple of hours.

Both of them thinking it would probably be before they even left.

Neither of them mentioning it.

Once he’d finished wrapping Johnny’s hands, he let out a heavy sigh and froze, and for a moment, just one moment, Johnny thought he was going to do it. He thought he was going to talk about it, finally bring up the bleeding elephant in the room with roses sprouting from its wounds.

But he didn’t. He just got up and pulled Johnny up with him, not looking at him once.

Once he’d helped him back to the couch, he vanished into the kitchen. Johnny watched him go.

Everything was slowly falling apart and yet somehow all coming together at the same time.

Johnny blinked, looking down at his rewrapped hands.

The bandages were so white as to almost be blinding.

It was almost strange to think right now that in a couple of hours they’d have twin circles of red on either side of them. And they’d have to be changed all over again.

And all over again Johnny would wonder at their purity before his blood ruined it yet again.

Soda, Steve, and Two-Bit were playing cards now on the floor in from the television, purple smoke from Soda’s joint hovering above them all in a thin cloud. Johnny stared at them, only half watching it all, watching them play, watching them cheat, watching them grin at their cards, fanned out between their fingers when someone caught them doing so.

The television blared in the background, the weatherman talking about how summer was ending, how autumn was beginning, how soon there would be storms that turned the clouds green and made rain lash the earth beneath them.

Johnny wanted to change the channel, wanted to find something else to listen to, even if he wasn’t really watching it. But there was no remote control here like there was at home and all he could do was listen to the weatherman tell him things that he and everyone else in the house already knew.

Johnny’s eyes moved around the room, his mind wandering away from what was on the TV.

There were four crosses in here.

One inadvertently carved into the wood of the wall; one hanging on the wall in the kitchen, just visible from his vantage point; a small one carved out of wood sitting on top of the television set, and another one made from the creases on the back of Two-Bit’s shirt.

The ones in the kitchen and on the TV surprised him. The one in Two-Bit’s shirt made him grin.

“That’s all for your ten day weather forecast,” the weatherman was saying now. “Now we turn to our faith hour. We’ll be back at the top of the hour for another weather report and breaking news.”

Johnny blinked again, coming out of his thoughts all at once, his eyes shifting back to the television. He watched the news channel’s logo flashing across the screen before slowly fading to black. A moment later, the logo for the faith hour came on: another cross, this one made of what appeared to be gold, with the words FAITH HOUR super imposed on the middle. The logo faded away to show a man standing in a sanctuary larger than Johnny had ever seen. He stood in front of a microphone on a large pulpit in front of a sea of people and began to preach.

Johnny barely heard the words, the microphone and television set distorting them in a strange way that he couldn’t decipher. But it must have been something. The people all crowded into the pews of the massive sanctuary kept cheering and clapping with every sentence the preacher spoke.

“Dinner’s ready!”

Darry’s voice made Johnny jump a foot in the air, his gaze flicking from the TV to the kitchen. He blinked, watching Ponyboy and Dallas behind Darry walking back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room, carrying casserole dishes and giant bowls full of food.

“You can set the table,” Darry said, pointing at Sodapop before going to help Ponyboy and Dallas carry the rest of the food to the dining table.

Soda complained, standing and staggering, taking another hint of the joint as he did so.

“C’mon, Soda,” Steve said, heading into the dining room with Two-Bit right behind him. “Settin’ the table ain’t so bad. Unless you’re high. Oh wait!”

Steve and Two-Bit cackled while Soda glared at them.

“At least dinner will taste better for me than y’all,” he mumbled, slouching into the kitchen to get the silverware and napkins.

Johnny got up slowly, limping into the dining room.

He didn’t bother turning off the television. No one else did either.

Johnny had started eating again. Not very much, but enough that Dally seemed pleased, happier than he’d been when Johnny wasn’t eating at all. There were still days he ate almost nothing. What Dally didn’t seem to understand is food repulsed him now. And eating just made him feel sick.

He never would have admitted to Dallas, but he couldn’t help noticing how much weight he’d lost just in the past few days from eating so little.

It made him smile.

But he’d vowed to try to eat something today.

Darry was making dinner and he hadn’t had one of Darry’s dinners in two weeks.

It felt wrong to not at least try to eat a little of everything on his plate.

Regardless of how it made him feel.

The dining table was covered in variety of southern foods: extra crispy fried chicken – a copycat recipe from Kentucky Fried Chicken, all of their favorite fast food joint – garlic mashed potatoes, scalloped potatoes, creamed spinach, cornbread with honeybutter, collared greens, macaroni and cheese, coleslaw, baked beans, deviled eggs, and a huge pot of gumbo.

Dinners at the Curtis’s were more like feasts rather than just regular meals.

Johnny was still impressed Darry had managed to cook all of this with minimal help, even if he was certain he had been cooking as much as he could all day and in the few days prior.

There was a large pitcher of ice water in the center of the table.

Johnny grabbed that first, holding back a wince, pressing his lips into a tight thin line as he poured the water into his glass by his plate.

Everyone around him started grabbing various plates and bowls, filling the plate in front of them with the food spread out around the table. Johnny took a little of whatever was passed to him: the fried chicken, the creamed spinach, a deviled egg, some cornbread with a dollop of honeybutter. It didn’t taken long for his plate to be filled and once it was he stared at it, his hands clenched into frustrated fists in his lap.

This was more food than he’d planned on eating.

His stomach roiled at the thought.

The preacher’s voice on the television rang in from the living room, the words suddenly loud, audible, and unbelievably clear.

“Jesus said to the servant, ‘Fill the jars with water.’; so they filled them to the brim.”

Johnny looked up, turning his head slightly towards the entrance to the living room.

It seemed he was the only one in the room that could hear the sermon.

“And then he told them, ‘Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.’”

Johnny reached out to take his cup to take a drink of water.

But the moment his fingers touched the glass, his eyes snapped shut of their own accord and he no longer saw the dining room, he saw something else entirely.

 

_The wedding was being held outside under white tarps being held up by wooden poles._

_Johnny stood away from the crowd dancing to the tune of the instruments playing near a makeshift dance floor that was little more than a thin slab of wood put on the dusty ground. He stood over a collection of six stone jars full of water._

_“Take them to the father of the bride,” Johnny said, looking up from the jars._

_The people around him drew their brows together, hesitating._

_“Do as he says,” said a woman to his left. She wore a shawl over her head, like many of the women around them. Her hair was dark and her skin was too. She had a fierceness in her eyes the surrounding people – men and women alike – didn’t seem to want to question._

_It seemed they feared her._

_Feared her as much as they loved him._

_He bowed his head. The love embarrassed him still._

_The people did as they were told, six of them taking the stone jars to the man sitting at the high table, his daughter and son-in-law to the right of him, his other family members to the left._

_Without hesitation, without even looking in the jar to see what he’d been brought, the father lifted one of the jars to his lips and took a hearty drink. He let out a sigh of contentment, telling the women who had brought him the jar, “Finest wine I have ever tasted!”_

_The people standing near Johnny and even the ones standing near the other table now, all turned to him. There was shock in their eyes, but also awe, respect._

_In a few there was even fear._

_Johnny saw none of this. His eyes never left his palms, braced against the table he stood by._

_He’d known this would happen long before it did._

_But this was only the beginning._

_There was so much more to come._

 

Johnny slumped in his chair and nearly fall out of it, his eyes snapping open as he gasped for air. He could feel every eye of every person sitting at the table on him.

He didn’t look at any of them.

And his fingers never left the glass of water in front of him.

There was a small gasp somewhere in front of him and Johnny looked up.

Soda was the one who had gasped, sitting across from him, frozen halfway through taking the bowl of mashed potatoes from Steve.

But his eyes weren’t on Johnny. They were on the glass of water in front of him.

Johnny’s eyes shifted to the glass. Already he could feel hot wetness dripping from his nose.

What looked like purple dye was falling through the glass, tinting the water, making it darker and darker and darker, until it reached the bottom.

There was no one standing over him.

No one even close to him who could’ve turned the water purple.

He picked up the glass.

“What is that?” Soda asked, his voice barely more than a whisper.

Johnny lifted it to his lips and took a sip, already knowing how it would taste before he did.

He opened his mouth to reply to Soda all the same, but Dally beat him to it.

“It’s wine.”

The preacher on the TV said, “What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed him.”

* * *

Dally had been grateful when Darry and Ponyboy asked if he wanted to help them in the kitchen. He shrugged off his suit jacket, throwing it on the couch and, after rewrapping Johnny’s hands (the scent of flowers followed him out of the bathroom and filled the house, even with him so far away, even when he tried so hard to ignore it), he joined them in the kitchen, watching the fried chicken so it wouldn’t burn, stirring the potatoes so they wouldn’t stick to the bottom of the pot, tasting the creamed spinach when Pony asked him to, making sure it had the right consistency.

He was absorbed by what he was doing, all thoughts of the funeral (and all past funerals) leeching from his brain the harder he worked and what should’ve taken them another two hours to finish took only another forty-five minutes.

Before he knew what was happening, Darry was calling everyone into the dining room and he and Ponyboy were carrying the vast array of dishes from the kitchen to the dining table.

The dining table was just large enough to hold all seven of them. Dally wasn’t sure how it managed to still be large enough to hold all of their plates, bowls, and silverware as well as the many dishes, platters, and pots that they brought in from the kitchen.

But somehow they all fit.

Dally set down the pot of gumbo, unable to keep himself from watching out of the corner of his eye as Johnny limped into the dining room.

Johnny ate very little now, less than he ever had. He’d always had issues with food, but Dally felt like this was something different. It had only started after his palms started to bleed. Dally wasn’t stupid. He knew the two were somehow connected.

 _Maybe all the sustenance he needs is given to him by the grace of God now,_ he thought, turning on his heel and going back into the kitchen to bring out another bowl.

It sounded insane, but everything that had happened in the last week would’ve sounded insane before it actually happened.

He still couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened when Johnny had placed his hands on Dally’s aching shoulders only three days ago.

He prayed silently that Johnny would eat today.

Words from the television, still blaring in the living room drifted into the dining room.

“They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew.”

Dally froze, midway between picking the already empty water pitcher off the table, ready to bring it back into the kitchen to refill it.

It was the same preacher Johnny had been watching lately. He was sure of it. Called FAITH HOUR or some such. It was part of the news channel.

He turned around slowly, his eyes going to Johnny.

Johnny’s eyes were closed, his fingers glued to the side of his glass of water.

Dally felt his breath catch in his throat.

He knew without having to ask what was happening.

No one else seemed to notice. They were all too busy loading their plates up with food.

Then Johnny’s eyelids fluttered open again and he slumped in his seat.

Dally took a step forward, convinced for a moment that Johnny was going to slide off his chair to the floor and somehow hurt himself.

But that didn’t happen.

His nose just started to bleed.

A moment later the water of his glass started turning dark purple.

Soda’s gasp seemed to come from another time and dimension.

So did his question: “What is that?”

Johnny lifted the glass to his lips and took a sip.

Dally’s grip on the water pitcher tightened, his lips pressing into a thin line.

“It’s wine,” he heard himself say.

Johnny opened his eyes and looked up at Dallas.

A moment after that his hands began to bleed so badly the blood ran down his arms and completely ruined the fresh bandages Dally had just put on them.

Dally didn’t even think. He set the pitcher back down and dragged Johnny away from the table, back to the living room. He laid him down, seeing everything through a long tunnel.

He wouldn’t even remember later having rushed to the bathroom after that to get fresh gauze.

“Dallas,” Johnny said quietly, watching Dally unwrap and rewrap his palms.

Dally wasn’t even sure if there was any point to it. His hands were bleeding so bad, he knew the fresh gauze would be bled through in a matter of minutes.

“Dallas,” Johnny said again.

Dally didn’t reply, but he flicked his eyes to his face briefly.

Johnny looked...afraid, his eyes not on Dally’s face but his feet, still covered by his shoes and socks. His mouth was set in a wavering grimace.

His palms must have really hurt for him to show it so blatantly.

“What is it, Johnnycake?” Dally asked, his eyes going back to what he was doing.

“My feet hurt too,” he whispered.

Dally froze, his eyes going to Johnny’s face.

Johnny still wasn’t looking at him.

Dally’s hands started to shake.

It took him five minutes longer to finish rewrapping his palms. It took another five minutes for him to take off his shoes and socks.

His feet weren’t bleeding, but they were red and looked irritated. Almost like he’d burned them.

Dally didn’t do anything. He just stared at them, struggling to take in breath, struggling to do anything except sit there, staring at Johnny’s feet.

He barely heard Soda’s voice when he came into the living room to tell them that all of their glasses had turned to wine. He didn’t even hear the awe and subtle fear in his voice when he said it.

All he could think of was Johnny’s bleeding palms and his irritated feet.

And what he knew was coming next.

And how he knew now beyond any shadow of a doubt, there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Dally wasn’t sure how many more times he could fall apart in one day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have officially planned everythin' out in terms of this fic, so i know what all the chapters are gonna be. there's gonna be 25 chapters and, at the rate i'm goin', this fic will be 125k words. anyway, i hope y'all enjoy this chapter!!


	5. The Road from Nazareth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But in the end, it truly didn’t matter. The outcome was the same: not one of them believed the Indian summer was a product of good weather and good luck. It was something else entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow it has been over a month since i posted anythin'. i had a rough month dueta bein' exhausted constantly and unableta do anythin' other than sit on my computer and lay in bed for the month cause i exercised intensely for 4 days. if you're wonderin' why that laid me up for a whole month, it's cause i have a very severe case of chronic fatigue syndrome, so exercisin' like that not only is dangerous for me, but makes me literally so sick and tired i gave myself mono and was sick for a whole month.
> 
> ANYWAY, this chapter took me 3 days to write cause i wantedta to it right, so i hope ya enjoy it. it's my longest chapter yet.
> 
> pls listen to the night king by ramin djawadi while ya read it cause that's what i was listenin' to while i wrote it.

_Saturday, September 4 th, 1965; 7:30 a.m._

_Tulsa, Oklahoma_

The sun was just creeping over the tops of the trees, casting long shadows across the dirt roads and patchy lawns that ran in between the houses of the east side of Tulsa, Oklahoma. It caught in the tiny dewdrops that had formed overnight on the sparse, brilliantly green blades of grass that blanketed the empty lot and parts of the residents’ yards. It shone through the equally green leaves of the trees that green here and there throughout the neighborhoods of the east side, dappling the ground in strange shadows. A light breeze blew through the open windows of the houses, billowing curtains and ruffling the hair of those sleeping near them, making a few of their eyelids flutter open, making others roll over, pulling the blankets over their faces as they tried to go back to sleep.

It was September now, the time when kids would be going back to school and the leaves would start to change colors and coat the ground in their brilliance they painted tree branches with first, but it seemed that no one had told Tulsa this. The world was as warm as ever, the leaves still as bright green as they’d been in the spring, and summer clearly wasn’t over, not yet. The world showed no signs of letting it be over any time soon either. Already weather forecasters were saying it was going to be an Indian summer that could last well into October. Even for Tulsa this was odd, but no one questioned it. No one thought it was anything unusual.

No one except Dallas Winston and Johnny Cade.

They hadn’t told anyone, but they knew better.

And, if truth be told, after last Sunday, their friends did too.

Even if not one of them wanted to admit it

Even if all of them had different reasons for not wanting to admit it.

But in the end, it truly didn’t matter.

The outcome was the same: not one of them believed the Indian summer was a product of good weather and good luck. It was something else entirely.

This was Dally’s first thought when he woke up, his eyelids opening slowly to see the world outside, his face half pressed deep into his pillow, his other eye shut against the silk pillowcase. He could feel the wind blowing in from outside on his bare back and arms. He could hear someone’s wind chime ringing nearby. He could smell the new day as the scent wafted in with the breeze and he could see the smokey patterns the sun made on the hardwood floor of their bedroom as the curtains blew in and out of the suns rays.

He didn’t move as he slowly took in the new day.

He only thought about all that had happened, a practice that had become uncomfortably routine for his mornings before work.

It had been almost a week since Angela Shepard’s funeral. And Dallas Winston, the boy who hated God, had already lost track of how many times he had been to church since this all began.

This being Johnny’s bleeding palms, his red and irritated feet.

This being the held back winces and sharp gasps every time he held something too tight or walked less than gingerly around the house, the town, everywhere.

This being the counting of the crosses and the visits to church.

This being the way he stared at the stained glass above the pulpit, enraptured in way that would only terrify Dallas because he knew all too well what all of this meant.

He knew all too well what the culmination of all of this would be.

Dally turned away from the window, pressing his face into his pillow, shutting out the world, making everything go black. He didn’t want to go to work today. He wanted to go back to sleep. He wanted to sleep for the next week and a half, but he couldn’t. He had to work. Because Johnny couldn’t. And they needed the money.

It felt like it had been much longer than a week since Angela’s funeral. It felt more like a month a had passed. So much had happened in that short amount of time.

The first two days after the funeral had been long and slow and full of worrying.

Dally had kept Johnny off his feet, trying not to look at them, trying not to see how red and irritated they had become, trying not to think about what that meant. But he learned very quickly that was a lost cause and all too soon the thoughts flooded his mind and it was all he could do to get through each day without standing in one place, thinking through every possibility and scenario.

 _How much longer?_ was the main question that resonated through his mind.

He didn’t think he really needed to elaborate on what that meant. But that didn’t change his desire to know the answer to that question. Mainly because the answer to that question was also the answer to the bigger question asked in the exact same way.

_How much longer?_

_How much longer...till it all ends?_

Every time the second question came to his mind, his breath caught in his throat and his eyes shut tight and he clung to whatever was in front of him, waves of vertigo threatening to drown him as he remembered there was a timeline to all of this and at the end of that timeline was the end of all things, the end of the world. Maybe not for everyone else, but the end for him.

The end for him forever.

 _No,_ he tried to convince himself. _No, you don’t know that. Not for sure._

 _Don’t you?_ a soft voice in his head would always reply.

_Don’t you?_

It asked nothing else, but it hardly needed to. Those two simple words were more than enough.

Dally had yet to decide if it had been a blessing or a curse that he somehow got the two days after Angela’s funeral off from work.

Dally pushed himself up in bed, the world spinning and his head aching as the blood rushed from it. He closed his eyes tight, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, bracing his arms on either side of himself for a moment, waiting for the pain to pass, turning his head out of habit to look at Johnny, sleeping soundly, his back to Dallas, once it did.

Even without being able to see his face, he looked peaceful.

It struck him then he had never seen him look so peaceful ever when he was awake.

The simple realization broke his heart into dagger-like shards he knew he could never piece back together again. That seemed to be happening a lot lately.

By now, his heart had to be little more than dust.

How long before it was blown away in the wind?

The question again.

_How much longer...till it all ends?_

He didn’t want to know.

The Wednesday after Angela’s funeral had been the day of the evening church service and, once he got home from work, Dally had seriously thought about begging Johnny to not go this week, but when the time came to do the begging, he found himself unable to. Johnny wanted to go. He looked so excited to go, even though walking was getting hard for him again and he had to lean on his cane more than usual. Dally couldn’t bring himself to take it away from him.

He wasn’t that selfish.

The only difference between the Sunday service and the Wednesday service was that one took place in the morning and the other in the evening. Sometimes the sermons were different depending on which service you went to. Sometimes they were the same. But that didn’t seem to matter to Johnny. He wanted to stay whether or not he’d heard the sermon before.

“It’s not about hearing what’s said,” Johnny had explained to Dallas in his quiet voice when Dally brought this up. “It’s about being there.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Dally had asked, his tone harsher than he meant it to be, but it hadn’t really mattered in the end anyway. Johnny didn’t reply. His feelings went beyond words and if Dally couldn’t understand it in the way he said it, he knew he just wasn’t going to.

They drove to church that night instead of walking even though it wasn’t very far.

Johnny’s feet hurt. And Dally knew they were only going to get worse. He parked close to the doors, using the handicap placard the doctor had given them months ago, despite Johnny’s protests.

“It’s not that bad, Dal, really,” he’d said, his voice soft.

This time it was Dally that didn’t answer.

He pressed his lips into a thin line, turned off the car and got out without looking at Johnny. He knew Johnny enjoyed martyring himself for reasons Dallas knew he would never quite figure out, but he wasn’t going to let him do it if he could help it.

Johnny had been through enough.

Dally hardly paid attention to the sermon and instead focused on his thoughts, which, if he were going to be honest, was worse.

_How much longer?_

_How much longer...till it all ends?_

_No. No, you don’t know that for sure._

_Don’t you?_

_Don’t you?_

_Don’t...you?_

He was so lost in his thoughts, so lost in the same cycle he had been lost in for the last two days that it wasn’t until Johnny said his name and lightly tugged on his shirt like a small child that he finally blinked and turned to him, realizing people were leaving, that the service was over.

It still wasn’t dark outside when they left the church. The sun was low in the sky, casting long shadows, but it wasn’t yet night.

Dally wanted to go home and sleep for the next forty years.

Maybe if he did that, he would wake up and realize all of this was just a bad dream.

Maybe when he woke up, everything would be back to normal.

Maybe he’d get really lucky and the church fire never would’ve happened either.

But that wasn’t what happened.

He helped Johnny into the car. He got himself. And they drove home. And when they got home, he helped Johnny out of the car and to the living room couch. He took off his shoes and rubbed his feet for him without being asked while they both silently watched whatever came on TV, neither of them speaking about all of the things they probably needed to be said.

Dally had a feeling that, though Johnny refused to let Dally do anything to lessen his pain beyond rubbing his feet for him – something he was sure would end when they inevitably started to bleed too (he shut his eyes tight at the thought; _mustn’t think about that now_ ) – he was, in a way, just as afraid of what was going to happen as Dally was.

The program they were watching switched over to the night edition of the news.

Neither one of them moved to change the channel.

The newscaster talked about the weather for much longer than Dally wanted him to. It seemed everyone except him couldn’t get over how warm it still was at the beginning of September.

 _Isn’t it usually this warm?_ he thought, staring without seeing at the television. _It’s only the beginning of September for fuck’s sake. It don’t usually start gettin’ cold till the end of the month._

But he honestly couldn’t remember.

He just wanted the newscaster to talk about anything else.

The too warm beginning of September brought back the questions and he’d spent too much time today already trying to answer them.

And then the newscaster _did_ start talking about something else, but when Dally realized what the topic was, he almost wished they’d go back to the weather.

Now they were talking about the bombing at The Dingo again.

Dally felt Johnny tense next to him. He reached for the remote, ready to change the channel, ready to watch literally anything else, but Johnny stopped him, saying, without even looking at him, “No. I want to see this.”

Dally’s grip on the remote tightened.

He _didn’t_ want to see this.

The news channel showed the smoking ruins of The Dingo again, showed all of the burned bodies surrounding the destroyed building, showed the survivors running from it, showed more survivors being loaded into ambulances. Dally didn’t really hear what the newscaster was saying, but thanked whoever was listening that none of the gang had been in that blast.

It was still a miracle that the only one of the Shepard gang who had been hurt was Angela.

“That was my fault,” Johnny whispered.

Dally blinked, slowly turning his face towards Johnny, unsure for a moment he had heard right.

“How?” he asked. “How on earth was this your fault?”

Johnny turned to look at Dallas. There were tears swimming in his eyes. He was blinking rapidly, struggling to keep them from falling. “You heard the Soc who did it,” he said quietly. “You heard what he said.”

Yes. Dally _had_ heard what he said.

“ _One of them is gonna ruin it for all of us! He’s gonna have powers none of us should have and he’s gonna say he’s chosen by God, but he’s not! It’s the devil’s work! He’s gonna ruin it! He’s gonna take away_ _all our lives! We gotta kill em all! We gotta destroy em all! All the fucking greasers!_ _Before they destroy us!_ ”

And that was why he hadn’t wanted to watch this to begin with because he knew that, in a way, Johnny had a point.

Johnny had never said he was chosen by God. That part wasn’t right.

But the rest of it…

Johnny could heal people. He’d only healed Dally that one time and, sometimes, he was able to convince himself it had just been a dream – a very vivid dream. But deep down he knew better.

 _Don’t you remember what happened in the Bible_? The same soft voice whispered in his mind. _Don’t you remember the Massacre of the Innocents? No oppressor goes down quietly._

“It’s my fault,” Johnny said again quietly, turning back to the TV, silent tears making tracks down his face, soaking the pillow beneath his head. “All of this. All of those deaths. All of those people getting hurt. Angela...it’s my fault.”

Dally swallowed and looked at him. “You didn’t know it was gonna happen, Johnnycake,” he said quietly. “You don’t even know who he is. You had no idea what he was gonna do.

He reached over to gently squeeze Johnny’s hand.

Johnny sucked in a breath, pain written into every line on his face.

And Dally hated himself.

Now as Dally stared at Johnny’s sleeping form, his body slowly rising and falling in time with his breathing, he wondered how much more pain and guilt, how much more sorrow and loss, how much more rage and terror, he would carry inside him...before this was over.

He turned away quickly, his eyes shutting tight, his hands clenching into fists, bunching up the sheets around him, his shoulders tensing.

_How much longer?_

_How much longer...till it all ends?_

_No. No, you don’t know that for sure._

_Don’t you?_

_Don’t you?_

_Don’t...you?_

He took a sharp breath and forced himself to stand, leaving the bedroom and going to the bathroom, taking a quick shower and using the toilet before he dressed in his work clothes – the blue button up top of the DX station and a clean pair of jeans – and headed to work.

He paused in the doorway to the bedroom one last time before he left, turning to look at Johnny again, watching his sleeping form. He looked so much younger when he slept.

His eyes went to his wrapped up palms. He’d changed his bandages last night and he had half a mind to change them again while he was sleeping before he left for work. They’d be ruined by the time he got back. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t wake Johnny, not now, not when he already had so much trouble sleeping and got too little sleep as it was.

It could wait.

He turned away slowly.

_How much longer?_

_How much longer...till it all ends?_

_No. No, you don’t know that for sure._

_Don’t you?_

_Don’t you?_

_Don’t...you?_

Yes, he did know.

And it didn’t matter, he realized how much he tried to convince himself otherwise.

He did know.

He did.

He...did.

* * *

“Winston! Pay attention, would ya?”

Dally was jolted out of his thoughts for the fourth time that day at work. He didn’t look up at Fix, who was the one that had yelled at him. Fix was so named for his ability to fix any car no matter how completely damaged it seemed. He was a tall almost too-thin boy with a mop of straw blonde hair that was dark near the roots, wasn’t ever greased, and always fell into his eyes. He never smiled or laughed. He’d been through a lot, that much was clear, but no one knew what exactly it was he had been through. All they knew was it was something.

Dally liked Fix. He was a good worker and, though they’d never hung out outside of work, he had a feeling if they did they’d either have a great time or end up in a fist fight because they were so much alike. If he hadn’t been with Johnny, Fix might’ve been the kind of boy Dally would’ve liked. But Dally was to the point where he couldn’t even imagine loving anyone else, no matter how attractive they might’ve been to him in the past or were in the present.

His eyes shifted towards the clock, hanging on the wall just behind Fix.

Eleven-thirty-three. Only twenty-seven more minutes before lunch break.

Dally didn’t usually eat lunch. He didn’t even get a snack from one of the vending machines pressed up against the side of the building out back.

That hadn’t always been the case. Not that long ago, he used to pack a lunch every day before he went to work and he would eat with everyone else during their lunch break.

But all that had changed.

Now he just let himself starve.

It kept his mind on something else other than the thoughts still circulating through his head, the ones he’d been trying to shut out since he left the house that morning.

Dally’d had troubles with eating all his life, stress always triggered it and coupled with the thoughts in his head, this was about the most stressed he’d been since Johnny had been in and out of the hospital over a year ago because of all the complications that had arisen from the church fire. Even thinking about it now, Dally shuddered.

How naive of him it had been to think it couldn’t have gotten any worse.

_How much longer?_

_How much longer...till it all ends?_

_No. No, you don’t know that for sure._

_Don’t you?_

_Don’t you?_

_Don’t...you?_

The questions went through his mind over and over again in endless circles, freezing him in place, making him forget where he was and what he was supposed to be doing. He was slowly beginning to realize the worst part of all of this was not even the questions themselves, but the fact he was asking them so early in this entire...process.

What was going to happen to him when this progressed?

When they got worse?

When they got irreversible?

 _They already_ are _irreversible,_ the same quiet voice in his head told him.

And all he could do was swallow hard. Because he knew the voice was right.

His grip tightened on the tools he was holding. He was supposed to be taking this tire off, so he could look at the breaks, but all he could do was sit there, holding the tools in a white knuckled grip, frozen in place, his eyes wide and glazed over, his breath catching in his throat, and his hands shaking so bad he was surprised he could hold anything at all.

“Winston!”

Dally jumped and looked up.

“C’mon, man!”

Fix again.

This had been happening all morning.

“Winston.” This time the voice was Digger’s and Dally looked up again. “Take your lunch early.”

His voice was not unkind and his expression was one of empathy. He wasn’t angry, but Dally still felt horrible, having done bad enough Digger didn’t want him in the garage at the moment. And even now, all he could do was nod. He couldn’t even make himself speak.

He handed his tools over to Soda, who gave him a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

Soda knew why he was this way. And when he looked at Steve he could tell he did too.

They’d all seen Johnny turn the water to wine at dinner after Angela’s funeral.

They’d all seen his hands bleed.

Dally realized as he slowly stood and stepped away from the bright yellow car they were working on that he still didn’t really know what the rest of the gang’s thoughts were on what had happened. He hadn’t asked them. And he didn’t think Johnny had asked them either.

He stepped outside into the shade of the overhang at the back of the garage. The rest of the world was lit up by blinding sunlight and a strikingly blue cloudless sky.

He pulled a cigarette out of the pack in his front jeans pocket, using his zippo lighter to light the end. He blew the smoke out into the sunny day, watching it disappear as the light and warmth took it.

_How much longer?_

_How much longer...till it all ends?_

_No. No, you don’t know that for sure._

_Don’t you?_

_Don’t you?_

_Don’t...you?_

He didn’t want to know.

He really, _really_ did _not_ want to know.

“Hey Dally.”

For what felt like the millionth time that day, Dallas jumped and turned to see Soda and Steve coming out of the door leading back into the garage with paper bags. Soda was smiling again, but like before the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Dally couldn’t stop himself from wondering why. What had happened?

“Hey,” he managed.

Soda sat, his back pressed up against the wall of the garage, pulling a pasta salad and egg salad sandwich out of his paper bag. Steve pulled out a bottle of beer, a ham and cheese sandwich, and a slice of Darry’s chocolate cake. They both pulled packs of cigarettes out of the front pocket of their work uniforms along with a pair of matchbooks.

“So what’s up with you?” Soda asked, not looking at him as he started in on his sandwich.

Dally swallowed hard, sitting down next to Soda. Where to begin. Did he even want to?

Finally, he said, “Nothin’. Just a lot’s been goin’ on, y’know?”

Soda nodded, still eating, but Steve looked up at him, his brows drawing together.

They both knew better. They both knew what was really bothering him. And though neither of them said anything, Steve was still the one who let him know it.

Dally looked away quickly.

“You work tomorrow?” Soda asked, breaking the tense silence that followed.

Dally shook his head. “No.”

Soda looked up and this time when he smiled it _did_ reach his eyes. “Wanna go with us to the state fair tonight? Darry don’t work tomorrow either and neither do we, so we’re all tryin’ta go, since Pony starts school again soon and we wanna all hang out together before we all get busy with stuff.”

Of all the things Dally had expected Soda to say, this _wasn’t_ it.

The simple answer was no. He didn’t want to go to the fair. He didn’t want to go somewhere he was expected to smile and have fun when he couldn’t even imagine himself doing that to begin with. But how could he explain that to Soda? And how, really, could he deny Johnny the chance to have a good time? Couldn’t he put everything aside for one evening and try to enjoy himself?

Again, the short, simple answer was no, he really didn’t think he could.

But that wasn’t what he said.

“Okay,” he replied. “That sounds like fun. I’ll tell Johnny when I get home.”

Soda nodded, grinning. “Awesome, man,” he said. “We’re gonna go around four-thirty, since Steve and I get done with work at four. You can ride with us or meet us there.”

“I’ll meetcha there,” Dally said, his eyes glazing over as he stared at the ground, smoke coming out of his mouth with his words.

But he knew as soon as he said it, it was the wrong thing to say.

He knew that would give him time. Too much time. Time to think, time to reconsider the ever present questions, haunting his thoughts.

_How much longer?_

_How much longer...till it all ends?_

_No. No, you don’t know that for sure._

_Don’t you?_

_Don’t you?_

_Don’t...you?_

Dally closed his eyes and clenched his fists and turned away.

And that wasn’t even the worst part of all of this.

No.

The worst part was none of this was going to get better.

It was only going to get worse.

* * *

The rest of the work day passed in haze that Dally wouldn’t really remember much of later. He worked on autopilot, forcing himself into action despite the paralyzing fears still gripping his heart and mind, trying desperately to focus on what he was doing and the promise of a good night out with Johnny and the gang instead of the thoughts still running in circles through his head with his lips pressed into a thin line and his brows drawn together, even as he saw the world through a longer and longer tunnel.

When Digger finally told him he could go home around three-thirty, he closed his eyes and let out a gasp of a sigh. He wasn’t sure if it was from relief or dread.

Going home meant seeing Johnny.

But it also meant he would have nothing to distract him from his thoughts.

And something told him that, despite his hopes, going to a fair wouldn’t help that either.

“See ya at four-thirty!” Soda called cheerily to him as he left the garage.

He waved at Soda, forcing a smile back, but neither one of their smiles met their eyes.

Dallas still wondered what had made Soda so sad even he couldn’t smile properly.

 _He’s worried about Johnny too,_ something told him. _No normal person can turn water to wine. No normal person has palms that bleed constantly._

Which made Dally wonder what Soda thought was going on.

Even if none of the gang had really been to church the way Dally had as a child, they all knew the stories in the Bible. So did Soda think this was something religious like Johnny did? (Like Dally knew it was, but refused to accept?) Or did he think it was something else entirely? And what did the rest of the gang think? Were they afraid of Johnny? In awe of him?

Dally hadn’t asked them and, in truth, didn’t know how to, so he didn’t know what their thoughts were or might have been.

He doubted it was anything bad, but Dally knew the Bible.

He knew that even if the gang didn’t think it was anything bad or wrong, not everyone was going to feel the same way. The bombing of The Dingo was proof of that already.

 _What’s gonna happen,_ he couldn’t stop himself from thinking, _when more people find out what Johnny can do? What are they gonna do? What are they gonna do to him?_

Dally had read the Bible.

He knew how it ended.

He knew why it went the way it had.

Not everyone had liked that there was someone out there who was the son of God.

Not everyone had liked that this someone had powers others could only dream of.

Not everyone had liked how many followers they had as a result.

_What are they gonna do to him?_

Another question to add to the others still running through his mind.

_Don’t you know?_

Another question.

With the same answer.

It seemed that Dally blinked and he was already walking down the sidewalk on the street of the home he shared with Johnny, the facade of the white house seeming to glow in the mid-afternoon light as the sun shone directly on the face of it. The windows caught the sunlight, reflecting it back into his eyes, making them opaque. From here, Dally couldn’t see into the house at all.

He reached the house and stepped inside, whistling as he did so out of habit.

It was silent, the only sound coming from the wind chimes of their neighbors as a breeze blew through the front door and the window open in the bedroom.

“Johnnycake?” Dally called.

“I’m in here, Dal,” Johnny called back. The voice came from the bedroom.

Dally shut the door behind him and walked slowly to the bedroom.

Johnny sat on the chaise by the window, trying to replace the bandages on his palms with new ones, but it was clear he was having trouble doing so. His palms kept bleeding, staining the chaise beneath him, ruining the new bandages as he continually unwrapped and rewrapped his hands in new ways, the wrappings always coming undone. He let out a frustrated sigh and looked up at Dallas.

“How was work?” he asked, smiling at him, his hands dropping into his lap.

Dally swallowed hard. “Let me do that,” he said, stepping forwards.

He wasn’t sure how to answer Johnny’s question. But this. This he knew how to fix.

“You’re gonna haveta get new bandages,” Johnny admitted. “I think I ruined these ones.”

Dally nodded once and turned on his heel, going into the bathroom and opening the cupboard beneath the sink. It was full of unused gauze bandage wraps. He’d gotten them the last time he’d gotten paid. The woman at the store had looked at him strangely when he’d gone up to the register to pay for them all. The look on her face had been clear enough without her asking the question that was clearly on her mind: Did he work for the hospital?

Dally hadn’t answered that question.

It wasn’t her business anyway.

Returning to the bedroom, Dally ripped open the new package of bandages and swept the ruined ones into the trash can Johnny had brought over next to the chaise. He knelt down on one knee, gently taking Johnny’s hand between his fingers and for a moment, stared at the perfect circle of blood in the center of his palm, small rivulets making tracks down his wrist to the already stained chaise.

He swallowed hard, wondering vaguely if one day he’d be able to clean the wound enough to see through it. The thought alone made him shudder, deciding he didn’t want to do that.

Slowly, carefully, Dally rewrapped Johnny’s palms, keeping his eyes on them the entire time, not once looking up until he pinned the bandages in place.

“Thank you, Dallas,” Johnny said, his voice barely more than a whisper when he spoke.

Dally’s eyes flicked up. Johnny’s eyes were on his palms still.

He’d been watching him the whole time too.

“Soda invited us to go to the state fair with him and the resta the gang in an hour,” Dally said suddenly. “You wanna go? I said we would, but if you don’t wanna we don’t gotta.”

Johnny looked up then and smiled. “Yeah,” he replied, appearing, for the first time in days, genuinely happy, like his old self. “Yeah, that sounds like fun.”

Dally nodded once. “Okay. Then we’ll go.”

But he wasn’t smiling as he said it.

He’d been right.

No fair was going to make everything better.

* * *

It was rare that Johnny left the house anymore. With his palms constantly hurting and his feet beginning to hurt just as much, it was much easier for him to just stay home, curled up on his chaise near the window in the bedroom or stretched out on the couch in the living room. Then at least, the pain was less because he wasn’t using his hands or feet. At least not that much.

More than once Dallas had offered to get him pain meds from the pharmacy down the street or take him to the doctor and see what could be done about the holes in his palms, but Johnny had shaken his head and said no every single time.

It had been weeks since this all began and Dally still didn’t seem to get it.

Feeling the pain was part of the point.

Johnny knew Dally hated this, all of this, and he knew he was afraid of what the future might hold and, while Johnny was, in some ways, afraid as well, he wouldn’t change anything that was going to happen for the world. This was a good thing. All of it. Even the bad parts. Even the painful parts. And it was something, he knew, Dally would never understand.

In many ways, he felt this whole thing was unfair to Dallas.

Dally’s biggest fear and greatest torment was seeing those he loved suffer. And that was all he was going to see here. Johnny knew it.

And, in truth, Johnny knew how it would end too.

Which would really only make it all worse.

And there was nothing Johnny could do or say to fix it or make it better.

He could only let it happen.

And, yes, it was true he wanted it to happen.

But if there was a way he could make it all easier on Dally, he would’ve do it in a heartbeat.

Even going to the fair tonight seemed a poor attempt at making things better, at pretending everything was normal, especially when things were anything but.

Johnny got dressed slowly, pulling on his jeans, brown t-shirt, and denim jacket gingerly as though he were afraid the clothing would turn to dust if he weren’t careful. He didn’t look at himself in the full-length mirror that hung from the door as he grabbed his cane and, leaning on it heavily, ignoring the pain this caused in his palms as he did so, made his way into the living room where Dallas was already waiting, standing, his hands shoved into the pockets of his leather jacket, his head bowed. He looked like a soldier, defeated and broken by a war that had only just ended.

In a way he was.

Though scuffles with the Socs became rare after Bob’s death and Johnny’s near death, the aftermath of all that had come before still felt like the aftermath of war to every greaser – and maybe Soc, too – that had been involved. They all had nightmares. They all still expected things to get bad again. They were all still waiting around, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

If there was anything the greasers had learned in their short, painful lives, it was that peace never lasted long, no matter how much it seemed like it might.

 _Maybe that’s what this is,_ Johnny thought, his eyes flicking down to look at his throbbing palm clutching his cane. _The other shoe dropping._

But it didn’t feel that way. At least not to him.

But maybe it was.

The images of the wreckage of The Dingo panned through his mind again.

He swallowed hard.

Maybe it was.

And maybe it was really only the beginning of a new war.

“You readyta go, Johnnykid?”

Johnny looked up.

Dally was still staring at the ground. There was no smile on his face.

Johnny nodded once. “Yeah,” he replied.

Dally helped Johnny to the car and Johnny let him. He could’ve made it himself. He had his cane and he’d gotten pretty good at ignoring the pain in his palms by now, no matter how badly they hurt or ached or throbbed beneath the bandages.

But he let Dally help him.

Not because _he_ needed it, but because Dally did.

 _I’ll make it easier for him,_ he vowed silently. _Any way I can._

Because he knew soon, very soon, he wouldn’t be able to make it easier at all.

The drive to the fairgrounds was silent and interminable.

Johnny tried, many times, to come up with some sort of conversation that could comfortably break the silence, but everything he came up with came back to the problem of his bleeding palms and all that meant and all that had happened because of them.

He knew Dally was already thinking about them. He drove a little too fast and his hands clutched the steering wheel a little too tightly, turning his knuckles a ghostly white, his lips pressed into a line so thin they almost disappeared.

There was still grease on his fingertips from work and sweat clinging to the ends of his hair.

He hadn’t taken a shower after work like he normally did.

Johnny turned away, watching the world flit by outside the window.

Dally was getting lost in his thoughts, getting lost in the possibilities of the future.

And Johnny didn’t know how to make it better.

They parked in one of the handicap parking spaces near the entrance to the fairgrounds. Johnny could already see the gang waiting near the entrance, milling about, laughing, joking, pushing each other and telling jokes he couldn’t hear yet.

He smiled.

The gang greeted them loudly. Two-Bit offering them his beer in a paper bag, Darry smiling, Ponyboy giving Johnny a hug, Soda and Steve grinning and telling jokes that they finished for each other, holding each others hands for brief moments when they thought no one else was looking.

“Is Cherry gonna meet up with us?” Johnny asked Ponyboy as Darry, Soda, Steve, and Dally paid for everyone’s tickets, before they all immediately headed in the direction of the food stands all clustered on the left hand side of the grounds. “What about Evie and Sandy?”

Ponyboy had been dating Cherry without her parents’ knowledge for a while now. The gang knew and allowed her to hang out with them every now and then. Evie and Sandy had been Soda and Steve’s girlfriends. Or so they all thought. Turned out Steve and Soda were dating each other and Evie and Sandy were as well and they used double dates as a cover-up to all hang out together.

“Cherry hadta do somethin’ with her folks tonight,” Ponyboy replied. “And Evie and Sandy wantedta have their own private day at the fair, so it’s just us today.”

Johnny nodded.

He liked Evie and Sandy. Cherry too. In truth, the three girls had become part of the gang after the church fire. And while he did enjoy their company, he was also happy that today it was just them. Sometimes it was nice to just hang out with his friends.

They all got cheeseburgers and garlic fries and when they were done with those, they got corn on the cob so buttery it dripped into the small paper plates they were given with them.

They got cotton candy to share and s’mores that were so good they all got two more rounds of them when they finished their first ones.

They ate until they were so full they didn’t think they could ever eat again and then they headed back through the food stands, waddling like penguins or Thanksgiving turkeys to the games and rides that were scattered throughout the rest of the grounds.

Steve and Soda competed to see who could knock over the most bottles and win the best prize at the game stands, while Two-Bit and Dallas saw who could squirt the most water and raise their rocketship to the top of the stand the fastest.

Everyone goaded Darry into seeing how strong he was with the strongman high striker and even they were impressed when he managed to get the little arrow all the way to top of the pole lit with bright red and yellow neon lights.

Ponyboy and Johnny played the Wack-a-Mole game, both giggling, until Johnny dropped his hammer, gasping in pain and Dally had to finish the game for him.

Steve, Soda, Darry, Two-Bit, and Dally went on all the thrill rides they came across, while Ponyboy and Johnny watched from below, waving at them and calling them crazy for going on so many rollercoasters and freefall rides after they’d eaten so much, especially when Steve and Two-Bit started throwing up their dinner.

Ponyboy and Johnny joined them on the swing rides and the ferris wheel.

Johnny sat next to Dallas on the ferris wheel and when it stopped at the top of the ride, he let out a soft gasp, staring out over the park.

The sun was staring to go down by then and everything looked magical, all lit up with bright, flashing neon lights and filled with the smell of greasy food and the sound of excited laughter and thrilled screams. It was like a good dream he never wanted to end.

He turned to Dallas and, beaming, said, his voice soft, “Thanks for takin’ me out, Dal.”

Dally turned to him and, for the first time all day, smiled back and, where no one could see them, where no one would be looking, kissed him tenderly on the lips.

He pulled away as the ride started going back to the ground.

They all got off the ferris wheel one at a time and started heading back through the rides and games to the show tents, wanting to see the circus animals and magic shows that started once it got dark. There would be fireworks once it was completely dark out and they all were excited for that too.

But first they all wanted to eat again.

They headed back to the food stands and got more corn, more french fries, and Steve and Soda got a whole bucket of cheese curds for everyone to share.

They sat at the wooden picnic tables spread out under white and red striped tarps, eating and talking about the day, excitedly discussing what they thought the magic shows might be like or what the fireworks display would do.

“I hope the magician saws someone in half,” Two-Bit was saying. He was still drinking beer and, at this point, Johnny was unsure exactly how many beers he’d had. Enough he’d vomited twice after getting off rollercoasters. “It’s always cool when they do that.”

“I wanna see em do somethin’ we ain’t ever seen before,” Ponyboy replied.

“Well, like what?” Steve asked. He was having an ice cream cone.

“Well, if I knew I woulda seen it before, Steve,” Pony answered curtly.

Johnny opened his mouth to say something, but a loud voice behind him caught his attention.

“She’s so stupid, man. She don’t even know what I’m doin’.”

A bunch of laughs followed the statement.

Johnny looked over his shoulder and saw a group of greasers he didn’t know all leaning against the poles holding the tarp up, smoking and blowing smoke at a group of kids sitting nearby. They were all coughing and asking the older kids to stop, but each time they did, the greasers only laughed.

“Dumb broad,” one of the others replied to the first. He had a strange haircut: buzzed nearly to the scalp on one side. The rest was heavily greased. He was thin and wore black leather biker gloves, heavy black combat boots, and a matching leather jacket.

The others laughed again.

Johnny slowly began to turn back, his eyes catching on Dally as he did so.

He was watching them too and, from the look on his face, Johnny could tell he was about ready to get up out of his seat and kick their heads in.

“Don’t do it, Dal,” he said quietly. “They’re just bein’ dumb. Don’t get us thrown out.”

Dally didn’t look away from them, but his lips pressed into a thin line as he replied, “It’d be worth it. The way they talk about women...what they’re doin’ to those kids. They shouldn’t be allowed in here anyway if they’re gonna behave like that.”

“Y’know...that’s what they say about _us_ , Dal,” Johnny reminded him quietly, turning back to his second cheeseburger and fries, dipping one in the seasoned sour cream and eating it.

This time Dally _did_ look at him. “Are you seriously gonna defend them?” he hissed.

Johnny looked up. No one seemed to be paying attention to their conversation. The rest of them were too were engrossed in their discussion surrounding the fireworks and the magic show.

“There’s a story behind why everyone behaves the way they do,” Johnny said softly. “Maybe they act that way outta some sorta desireta look good to their friends cause they’re treated like shit at home. Maybe they just...don’t know any better.”

“ _We_ know better,” Dally replied, his voice still a hiss.

“Yeah, but we’re different people,” Johnny answered. “We gotta show compassion to others and show em howta do better since we _know_ howta do better.”

Dally stared at Johnny, his mouth open slightly, his eyes wide, floored by the response. “You gotta be jokin’,” he said, his voice rising only slightly. “After all you been through, ya wanna hold hands with the world’s worst people and sing Kumbaya? Really?”

“Yes,” Johnny answered, fiercely, looking Dally in the eye. “I do. It’s what’s right.”

“How d’you know that?” Dally retorted.

“Because,” Johnny began, “I’m –”

But he stopped short. The words that had been about to come out of his mouth sounded too insane to be real, too arrogant to speak aloud. And yet, despite that, he felt the truth of them in his heart and deep in his soul.

_Because I’m the Son of God._

Dally gave a rueful smile, seeming to hear the unspoken words. “Right. Okay. So if you...” He swallowed. Even he couldn’t say it. But for different reasons. It terrified Dally that this was what might be true. He took a breath and started again. “If _that’s_ who you are, then turn those rocks on the ground into bread. Or to gold. Or silver. That’s what someone like you should be ableta do, right?”

Johnny open his mouth to answer, but before he could get any words out, the world around him disappeared.

 

_The desert sun was hot, beating down on his back and neck as he trudged through the endless sands. It stretched out all around him and it had been weeks since he’d seen anything else. He’d had nothing to eat and barely anything to drink. He was exhausted._

_Ahead was a man. He was balding and dressed in robe with a rope tied around the waist. He wore sandals of the finest make the smile on his face was one of cunning and malevolence._

_“You are the Son of God,” the man said. It was a statement not a question._

_Johnny nodded to the man. “I am.”_

_“If that is so, then,” the man gestured to a pile of stones next to him, “turn these into loaves.”_

_Johnny looked away from the man. “You know what the scripture says: ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’”_

_The desert around them melted away._

_Suddenly they were in a Temple. There were people filling it and Johnny was on what appeared to be a throne before them all, all of them calling his name, chanting for him._

_“If you are the Son of God,” the man continued, “then throw yourself down. Does the scripture not say that you would dash yourself happily upon the stones at your feet.”_

_“Yes,” Johnny spat back, “and it also says, ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.’”_

_Again the world around them melted away._

_This time they were at the top of a mountain, the world spread out below them, so high up the clouds were beneath them. The man gestured to the world, the towns at their base of the mountain, the malevolent grin never leaving his face. “Everything there I will give you,” he said, “if you will fall down and worship me.”_

_“No!” Johnny screamed in reply. “Leave me be! I will only worship my Father, the Lord.”_

 

“Johnny! Wake up, man! Oh fuck, your nose is gushin’ blood.”

Johnny blinked rapidly, the world coming back to him slowly and then all at once.

The noise was the first thing he noticed and he gasped in shock. Then he smelled the food around him and he remembered where he really was: at the fairgrounds. With the gang. They were having a second dinner before they went to the circus and magic shows and then they were going to watch fireworks before they went home.

Then he felt the hot blood, running out of his nose and down his face.

“I’ll go get some napkins,” someone said somewhere off to his right.

It took him a minute to recognize the voice as Ponyboy’s.

“Dallas,” he said quietly, blinking as the world came slowly back into focus.

Dally was to his left, leaning over him, holding his hand, his face white as a sheet. “It’s okay, Johnnycake,” he said. All of the animosity from their conversation had left his face. He looked horrified now. It took Johnny a moment more to realize it was because he blamed himself for what had just happened. Johnny knew it wasn’t his fault, but if he told him what had really happened, he wasn’t sure it would make him feel any better.

His palms ached. He knew they were bleeding worse now. The bandages would be ruined by the time they got home. There was no way to get any new ones now. He didn’t think there was a first aid tent anywhere on the fairgrounds.

“You gave us quite a scare, kid.” This was Two-Bit talking. “Just fell right off the bench like a rock and started twitchin’. Kinda like what happened at dinner except for –”

He caught himself at stopped, which was surprising in and of itself, but it showed the seriousness of the whole situation.

Even Two-Bit Matthews realized talking about someone turning water to wine in a public place, surrounded by strangers wasn’t a smart move.

Ponyboy returned a moment later with the napkins and handed them to Johnny. His fingers were shaking as he pressed them to his nose and Dally helped him sit up, telling him to tilt his head back and pinch his nose, but Johnny didn’t do it. Then the blood would just run down the back of his throat and that would make it even worse.

The gang was going back to their food now that Johnny was conscious and sitting on the bench of the picnic table again, slowly eating his fries and cheeseburger despite his bleeding nose and bleeding, aching palms. The bandages looked wet there was so much blood.

“Johnny, what happened?” Dally asked quietly so no one else would hear.

Johnny swallowed. “I don’t know,” he lied.

He didn’t look at Dally as he spoke, but he didn’t have to to know he didn’t believe him.

_I’m the Son of God._

The thought still sounded wrong in his head.

And yet, somehow, it was the truth.

_I’m the Son of God._

_Yes,_ a small voice inside him replied, _but you know what happens to the Sons of God._

Yes. He did. He knew exactly what happened.

And that was exactly why he couldn’t tell Dallas.

He was already broken enough by what was happening. And this would completely shatter him.

* * *

Dally was shaking.

After they’d finished their food, they’d had to find the first aid tent. Johnny’s palms were bleeding so badly they were dripping blood even from the bandages and, thought Johnny said he was fine, Dally could tell from the look in his eyes that he wasn’t. He was in pain and his nose still hadn’t stopped bleeding. How much blood could someone lose from a nose bleed before it became dangerous? He really didn’t want to find out.

 _He hasn’t died from the blood loss to his palms yet,_ he thought.

 _Yet,_ something more sinister replied.

It said nothing else, but it didn’t have to.

That one word was the key here.

The circus and magic shows were a blur and by the time they were standing in the open field, watching the fireworks go off turning their faces all the colors of the rainbow as they flashed through the sky, Dally was more than ready to go home.

_How d’you know that?_

_Because I’m –_

Johnny hadn’t said the words, but he hadn’t needed to.

Dally already knew what he’d been about to say.

 _No,_ he told himself. _No, he can’t be. The Bible ain’t even real. That never happened. It’s just some story some person made up to get people to join together and do what they wanted. There ain’t no such thing as the Second Coming. There ain’t no rebirth. None of it is real. He’s just delusional._

But that wasn’t like Johnny. He did have hallucinations sometimes, yes, and he had paranoia, but delusions? Full on religious delusions? That wasn’t something Dally had ever known for Johnny to have. In fact, it was so far from what he felt as a person that he knew even as he thought it, he was just reaching, just grasping at straws, just trying to deny the inevitable. Yet again.

But if he accepted this as fact, that meant all of his worst fears _were_ inevitable and it really was just a matter of time until they came true.

And again the questions resurfaced.

_How much longer?_

_How much longer...till it all ends?_

_What’re they gonna do to him?_

_No. No, you don’t know that for sure._

_Don’t you?_

_Don’t you?_

_Don’t...you?_

He did. He knew. He knew exactly. And he hated God for everything He was.

 _You did this once already,_ he thought fiercely as the fireworks flashed in their finale above him. _Wasn’t once enough? You gotta make Johnny suffer too?_

But of course he got no answer.

He turned away as the fireworks flashed red, gold, blue, silver, and stuck his fist in his mouth.

He screamed.

No one heard him over the boom of the fireworks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm actually really pleased with how this chapter turned out despite how long it took me to actually come up with an idea for it and then actually get aroundta writin' it. i hope ya like it <3


End file.
